Are the Wheels of Your Organization in Alignment?
Streamlining operations, improving organizational performance, and standardized procedures are 3 critical and interlocking components of success in every organization. But as we have talked about in many posts, the real key is getting good people and good systems to work together. If the wheels on your car are out of alignment, you are in for a bumpy ride and might even end up in a ditch. It’s the same thing if your people and your systems are out of alignment.
Organizational Alignment Everyone knows what to do In his book, Less: Accomplishing More by Doing Less, Marc Lesser makes the point well:
“ORGANIZATIONAL ALIGNMENT: Organizations are in alignment when each person on the team or in the organization understands the larger mission and how his or her actions are connected to it. Organizations are out of alignment when individuals don’t fully understand and embrace the mission, goals, and objectives and don’t see how their particular activity influences and contributes to the organization.”
The Company Procedures Manual delivers many benefits, but not enough people recognize its power as a strategic management process. Writing policies and procedures down and sharing standard best practices serves to align your organization. Not only does everyone know what to do, everyone knows why they are doing it.
As you are doing your strategic organization planning, take a look at the alignment between people and systems. If it’s not in sync, developing and sharing clear standard operating procedures is the fastest way to get the wheels realigned.
By writing policies and procedures that clearly explain your unique business system you can guarantee that your employees understand their roles and responsibilities and are working on the right tasks. This is the very core of COMPROSE’s Operations Mapping approach and Zavanta software.