Alignment Issues
Someone once told me that one way to know if your car is out of alignment is to take your hands off the wheel on a flat, straight (and empty) stretch of road and see if the car slowly glides straight ahead or if it pulls to one side. If your car is in alignment, the wheel would stay where you left it and continue coasting straight ahead. But if your car is out of alignment, it will pull one direction or another if don’t have both hands on the wheel. In some particularly severe cases, you might feel your car pulling even when you have both hands on the wheel – it is a battle of strength and will, you vs. your car. How does a car get out of alignment? Somewhere along the line, you hit a curb or a pothole hard enough that jostled the suspension.
The same is true of our organizations. If the elements of our organization’s strategy are in alignment with one another, our organization can and should proceed on a forward path, as you directed it. But when, on the course of our journeys, our organizations are jostled and discombobulated – by funding cuts, global pandemics, changing landscapes, a change in leadership – we can get pulled off our course. We must continually check and adjust our alignment so our organizations stay on course.
How do you check alignment? In your car, you look for uneven wear on your tires (symptom) and the technician checks the camber, toe, and caster angles of your suspension. (Thanks to Bridgestone for help with the metaphor.)
Four Elements of Identity & Strategy
In our organizations, I think there are four elements of strategy or identity that need to be articulated and checked. Think of them as four tires that must be equally inflated, pointing in the same direction, and with enough tread to grip the road and propel you forward.
- Why: An organization’s “why” is often expressed in something like a Vision statement that describes why you exist and do the work you do. This is the change or result you seek.
- What: A Mission statement often communicates an organization’s “what.” This describes what you do to contribute to the change you seek.
- How: Your organization’s models (business, funding, service delivery) describe how you execute your “what.”
- Who: Your target population is your “who.” These are the customers, clients, and beneficiaries you serve.
Check Your Tires
Before you can align these elements of your strategy, though, you must reach consensus on what they are. This may seem simple and obvious, but it often is not. I recently worked with an organization that was grappling with significant strategic questions but these conversations had failed to gain much traction or forward movement (the metaphor still applies! Woohoo!). We later realized some part of the organization’s “stuck-ness” was due to different ideas of who the organization’s “who” was. Without a consensus on who they were trying to serve, they could not make decisions about the best way to do that.
Consider these questions:
- Does your organization’s vision statement describe the result you seek in specific and compelling terms? Or is it too generic and lofty? Does everyone agree on where and how high you are aiming?
- Is it clear what specific strategies your organization has selected to implement to make a meaningful contribution toward that desired result? Or is this also too broad, too vague, too inclusive to provide direction?
- Do you know whose needs are most central? Who do you aim to impact directly vs. indirectly? For whose benefit do you exist?
- Do you have intentionally selected models that allow you to reach your “who” and execute your “why”?
In our next post, we will talk about how to test the alignment of these four elements and which tools can help you create alignment.