In reading various resources on Leadership, you may get the sense that it is some mystical combination of traits, competencies, and skills. For many of us, it may appear that no one person can possibly possess them all. And even if it were possible, a brilliant, charismatic leader may not be able to overcome key obstacles standing in the way of translating strategy into reality.
In my 20+ years of working with clients, I have experienced that achieving strategy and challenging goals is more than about leadership. It also includes the discipline of aligning an organization’s structures, processes, and organizational culture/climate with the strategy. A recent HBR article makes an excellent case for the necessity of leadership possessing the not-so-sexy ability to implement and maintain sound management and the role of influencing the organization. I agree with the article and recommend reading it. Another great resource for reality-based leadership of organizations is Jason Randall’s book: Beyond the Superhero: Executive Leadership for the Rest of Us. Jason makes an effective case: Executive Leadership is definitely supported by effective leadership traits, but lofty leadership efforts and plans may not always thrive in heavy doses of reality.
Don’t get me wrong: I coach and train clients in leadership competencies and skills. I believe they are important, but we need to go a step further. We too often forget about the role that strategy-structure-culture alignment plays. You have likely recognized this as well. You know organizations that seem to get in their own way—that seem to “succeed” despite themselves.
Organizations and Executive Leadership need to ask themselves: “is our organization structured and aligned with our strategy? Which of our processes, structures, and practices are not aligned with our strategy, goals, or what we say we want to do?” These questions should not only apply to an organization’s overall strategy and implementation, but should also apply to smaller initiatives. Three examples are highlighted below.
(1) One non-profit has a very important mission in helping organizations implement critical initiatives. It has sound strategy in support of that mission. As part of achieving that strategy, they understood the role that Millennial employees could play as effective employees who want to make a difference. However, there were some key misalignment challenges. The organization was heavily bureaucratic in its structure, and promotions and opportunities for moving around the organization were very scarce. The organization also has a 2% annual pay raise that was not linked in any way to performance. You can imagine: the best, highly motivated employees were pretty discouraged that their low-performing colleagues got the same raise they did. Accountability for performance was weak as well. Opportunities for development were rare, and lateral mobility was not possible. In other words, many of the things that matter to employees were missing. Processes were heavily bureaucratic and cumbersome. Innovation was low. The organization could be realigned around the primary services to their clients, thereby allowing for the regular movement and employee development around and up the organization, but it was not happening. As a result, on a regular basis, their highest performers left the organization, and the employee churn rate was very high.
(2) A food products manufacturer focused 2022 operational improvements on a particular departmental area and made significant progress. Once key opportunities for improvement had been addressed and performance in the area had improved consistently, it became apparent that many of the causes for the deeper, more costly problems in operations came from misalignment with other upstream departments in the plant. There was only so much improvement that could be made in the primary focus process/department without a cross-functional structural alignment. Initially, improvement project teams became more cross-functional. Once the plant has become more comfortable with cross-functional alignment and a detailed path forward is developed, more formal cross-functional structure will be implemented. High performance operations require alignment.
(3) A supply chain client that was B2B before COVID understood the need to pivot the organization to the B2C Market in order to survive the pandemic, since 90+ percent of the B2B business went away in the short term. The change in strategy clearly necessitated changes in organizational structure, roles and responsibilities, employee policies, cross training needs, HR processes and enterprise technology. A re-alignment from top to bottom helped them survive the pandemic, execute their new strategy, and adapt to additional subsequent supply chain upheaval.
A discussion around this alignment principle cannot be adequately dissected in a blog, but tremendous improvement can be garnered in your organization by asking the right questions, as mentioned above: “Which of our processes, structures, and practices are not aligned with our strategy, goals, or what we say we want to do?” ( I would almost guarantee there are some, whether it is a misaligned organizational structure itself or technologies, accountability, decision-making, performance management, operational measures, HR processes, employee roles and responsibilities, just to name a few possibilities.)
Strong Leadership competencies and skills are vitally needed, and leaders must also ensure best organizational alignment. If you’d like a complimentary 60 minute strategy session to discuss how your organization can address leadership challenges and strategy/structure/culture alignment, please contact me or message me in LinkedIn.