Alignment for Implementation (pdf)

Description

Center for Simplified Strategic Planning has prepared a book about how to handle the issues of strategic alignment. This is the perfect book for you if you want to:

• Align your employees with your strategy
• Make implementation easier
• Get things done without pushing every step of the way
• Get ideas about creating a culture of execution
• Make sure you “walk the walk” with your strategies – and turn them into reality
• Bring the benefits of great strategic thinking to the next level down in your organization

This cutting edge book has eight chapters packed with powerful strategic insights:

• Building Support for the Strategic Plan: Aligning Employees with Strategy
• Buy-in: A Critical Element of Strategic Alignment
• Strategic Alignment And Interdepartmental Conflict
• Aligning Departments with your Strategy
• Aligning Strategy and Finance
• Aligning Strategy and Operations
• Lessons Learned in Aligning an Organization
• What Does Your Company Mean?

All of this useful and usable information is, of course, written by our strategy professionals and is based on years of experience working with companies just like yours!

Building Support for the Strategic Plan: Aligning Employees with Strategy

One of the most common difficulties companies face in strategic planning is turning their vision into a reality. To transform your organization into the one you envision takes more than great strategy and implementation, you also need to make the strategy an integral part of the very fiber of your organization. When we speak of this idea, we usually use the phrase “strategic alignment”. Aligning everyone in your organization with your strategy is one of the most important things you can do beyond formulating and implementing great strategies. Alignment will make it much easier for your management team to push the organization in the direction you intend. Without good alignment with the strategy, every bit of forward motion will be a struggle. As an example,…

Buy-in: A Critical Element of Strategic Alignment

As we define it, buy-in is the result of a number of factors, but, broken down to its most simple terms, it is: The result of getting everyone involved in a process to the point where each person thinks that the process is his or hers. Ownership, in other words, of the process involved. Also, there is an element of comfort and congruency of goals. If a person’s own ideals and goals are in alignment with those of the company,…

Strategic Alignment And Interdepartmental Conflict

The senior management team was furious – once again the company missed its annual goals and objectives. The company president was not only furious, but also feared for her job. How could this happen? There must be some underlying flaw in the strategic planning process.

The president embarked on a rigorous analysis of each objective to determine the cause of the problem. During this analysis interdepartmental finger pointing was the norm:

1. IT didn’t deliver on time.
2. Operations increased efficiency at the expenses of quality and customer satisfaction was down.
3. Acquisitions were not approved by finance resulting in missed growth targets.

The list was endless…

Aligning Departments with your Strategy

Over the years, several companies have asked me how I would go about getting departments of their organizations to support the vision we created in the strategic planning process. To begin with, it’s important to recognize that this is a good idea: any department in your organization can either support your strategy by being aligned with it, or block your strategy by pushing against it. To see how, let’s take a look at…

Aligning Strategy and Finance

Every function in an organizational impacts Strategic Alignment. However, in this article we will limit ourselves to the Financial Function. We will explore how it can maximize its contribution to Strategic Alignment. Then, when we finish, we will ask the impertinent question-“after the Financial Function has done all it can do to facilitate implementation and provide solid input, is it all that important?”

Aligning Strategy and Operations

One of the important keys to successful implementation is making sure that operations are aligned with the chosen strategy. In this article, we will explore some of the critical elements required for this alignment to take place.

Lessons Learned in Aligning an Organization

Thoroughly discouraged – that summed up how I felt. For the past two years I had been president of a financial services firm and we had some key success metrics under our belt, the company was now solidly profitable, cycle time had decreased by 25%, we had earned more this past year than in the past decade – so why was I feeling so discouraged?

We had just received the employee survey back, and overall, morale was up, people were motivated, but the answers to two questions still bothered me:

1. Are you familiar with the company’s strategy?
2. Do you know what you need to do in your position to move the company forward?

The answers to both questions were no.

What Does Your Company Mean?

Last week I had an interesting discussion with a director of Mary Kay, one of the most successful companies in the cosmetics industry. She wanted to know why it would be important for her sales reps to understand strategy.

Guarantee

The best part about this offer is that you don’t have to take our word for it – read the book, and if you are not 100% delighted with the insights it delivers, we will refund 100% of the purchase price.