Seriously, how hard could it be to align your workforce?

Seriously, quite hard.

If there's one problem affecting all types of organisations across all sectors it is aligning people around the common goals and purpose of their organisation.

Many have periods of alignment - maintaining it is the hard part.

Leaders often lament how their operation used to be tight-knit with everyone bouncing forward together, however as they grow / change / evolve / become challenged / make poor choices [take your pick] it's hard keeping it all together.

In fact, before becoming a freelancer myself (over a decade ago it seems), I cut my teeth in a corporate team environment. One company I joined consisted of about 90 people on two floors of the same building, and when I left nine years later there were more than 2,000 spread across several locations.

I know that feeling of proximity and collective energy, where you pretty much know everyone around you and, if not, they are one close connection away. The sense of joint ownership we had in our destiny was immense. And I know the feeling of losing it, and how small problems easily become big problems.

How do things change or get off track?

A couple of reference points from my work wit clients:

Case Study 1

A charity foundation partnership manager told me how much she loved her job before then lamenting that they'd lost contact with the people in the operational side of their business, and that they really need to build up and improve those bonds again.

This happened due to their growth and the passage of time.

Case Study 2

An organisation established an internal innovation hub and the leaders in this 'hub' were struggling to develop a strong working relationship with the business units they were being asked to support.

Words like 'fractured' and 'siloed' were frequently used, and employee turnover was high.

One of the (many) sources of this problem was conflict between the individual aims of their executives and their organisation's purpose and goals. Many people didn't even know what their purpose was.

Case Study 3

A very large company faced significant financial risk relating to a problem that had been let 'slide' for a period of time. It required bringing seven key stakeholders (internal and external) to formulate a solution.

In this case, all parties knew it was a problem, however no one had taken ownership or responsibility for fixing it until this point. The various units were focused on their own day-to-day issues rather than this bigger risk.

How to rectify?

From this selection of three case studies - I could have easily added 30 more - you'll notice how cracks in alignment are the underlying problem and they manifest in very different ways.

This is first and foremost a leadership challenge.

When teams are small, starting out together or experiencing rapid growth, there's less urgency in formalising 'alignment' because internal networks are small and relationships are strong.

But as people, markets and external environments change, they will find themselves in more challenging situations, having to backfill alignment from a place of weakness or stress rather than hardcoding it into their work culture from the start.

Purpose-driven leadership is the bedrock of the formalisation process, reducing unwanted risk as well as developing agility, flexibility, performance improvement and the innovation capability that is so desperately needed today.

Want to learn more?

I refer you to this article co-authored with Carolyn Butler-Madden and our purpose-driven leadership keynote outline. It is ideal for forward-thinking leaders who want to deliver outstanding results and high levels of impact.

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Phil Preston is the founder of WhyThisNow, guiding leaders, teams and organisations on purpose-driven solutions to their business challenges. He is a keynote speaker on performance, purpose and innovation. You can make contact with him via phil@philpreston.com.au