The time has come to combine all Top 5 Success Factors into an integrated system to maximize your success, a system we call Strategic Alignment™. Strategic Alignment is best illustrated with this diagram above.
Here you see the 5 Key Success Factors arranged in what looks like the crosshairs of a rifle or a radar screen. The point is to demonstrate that all factors are aligned, with Operations (what we do all day) in the center. But actually it does not matter how you position the 5 factors, since all are interrelated and important. Here’s how this concept can help you:
1. Your organization functions as a system, a whole which is greater than the sum of its parts, whether you want it to or not. All the parts are connected and interdependent. If something happens to one, it affects the others, and so forth. You cannot work on one of these Success Factors effectively without acknowledging its linkages with the others. For example, Strategic Focus should be developed with the input of your People and Customers, among other constituents.
2. For optimum success, it is essential to have these factors aligned. Most importantly your people must be aligned with what customers want and need. Operations should be designed to produce value for customers. Strategy is the overarching big plan, but unless it is aligned with your financial condition, you will have problems. If you reflect on this diagram and think about the relationships between each pair of Success Factors, you begin to see how this can be a guide to action.
3. In developing your strategic plans, this Strategic Alignment diagram can serve as a valuable reminder to be sure you have all the key factors covered. I once worked with a client group who had a lot of ideas which we began putting on the board. Then we sorted the ideas into the 5 Success Factors and found out that there was not one single point related to the organization’s people! Some of them were participating in the meeting, but no one voiced how important it was to include people/staff development/training in the strategic plan. A correlary of this is, everything you manage or control can be put under one of these 5 Success Factors if you understand them adequately.
4. When you go to implement a plan of any kind, you run into the problem that certain issues or responsibilities affect everybody and cannot be neatly pigeonholed into an existing functional department like manufacturing, sales or service. In industry it is increasingly common to deal with these problems through organizing cross-functional teams representing different areas of the company.
One great way to do this is to divide your people up into 5 teams, one for each Success Factor. If you have enough people, consider posting a sign-up sheet in the break room or on your intranet and let people sign up for what they are interested in. If you’re a nonprofit, mix up board members, staff and volunteers on the 5 teams so they can work together on broad issues.
However you organize, make sure you have these 5 bases covered. The Strategic Focus (or Strategic Management) committee can include the chairs of the other 4 groups plus the CEO, or it can be a group unto itself. Again this framework helps ensure that everything important gets covered and that there is a group already in place for every cross-functional or large problem which comes up.
As Albert Einstein said, “Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.” Strategic Alignment is just such a system–about as simple as you can get, but (or should we say therefore) very powerful.
I am indebted to a really great book, The Power of Alignment* for some of these concepts. Also highly relevant and really good is The Balanced Scorecard* I’ve mentioned before. Both are well grounded in research and practice.
References:
*The Power of Alignment: How Great Companies Stay Centered and Accomplish Extraordinary Things, by George Labovitz and Victor Rosansky: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0471177903/wwwlciwebcom
*The Balanced Scorecard: Translating Strategy Into Action, by Robert Kaplan and David Norton: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0875846513/wwwlciwebcom
The 5 Key Success Factors: A Powerful System for Total Business Success, by Buck Lawrimore: http://www.amazon.com/Key-Success-Factors-Powerful-Business/dp/1257156543/