I recently wrote an article for The CEO Magazine called “Engineering an Aligned Organization,” where I actually do the math about how complex it is to try to manually align an organization with a few as 50 people. It is the CEO’s responsibility to ensure that every employee understands the company’s vision/goals and how those relate to their day-to-day activities. However, there is also the issue of different departments and teams needing to collaborate with each other and report regularly on their projects. Without a formal system in place, this becomes a very difficult, time-consuming and inefficient process.
Here’s how I started out the piece. Check out the full article here: http://blogs.the-ceo-magazine.com/guest/engineering-aligned-organization
Every organization of significant size struggles with alignment. When I talk with CEOs, alignment is often the number one issue on their plate. Even organizations with as few as 25 employees often struggle with what seems like a simple problem: How do I get everyone on the same page?
While it seems like a simple problem, the complex nature of most modern organizations makes alignment quite challenging. To be successful and deliver the best possible product to the customer, most businesses require specialists in every area of the company to interact with each other. Unfortunately, because of the complexity in each specialized area, employees tend to have trouble seeing the bigger picture and working as a smoothly functioning team.