Organizational Alignment

Organizational Alignment determines the core health of a business.  If I am a client out there searching for a service provider of any kind, my first question to them and ask would be: what is their current level of Organizational Alignment?  A company without internal alignment cannot sustain a good relationship with clients, no matter how good their SLAs look.  The bottom line is that the quality of service does not begin and end with SLAs.  There are other factors in delivering a service that makes a service provider desirable or otherwise.

There are various models to adhere to when it comes to OA and one of the most popular is McKinsey 7S.  In this model there are three hard S’s and four soft S’s to align, within an organization and a metric to measure a service provider’s OA.  The hard S’s are: Structure, Strategy and System.  The soft S’s are: Skills, Style, Staff and Shared Value.  The Shared Value becomes the pivoting point for all other S’s.  

To briefly explain the S’s, Strategy is pretty much the plan of how this organization will be sustaining competitive advantage and successfully will compete in the market.  The Structure is about the way business units and divisions are organized.  The System, are the processes and the procedures followed by the company and employees.  Skills, relate to employee abilities and performance level as well as their competencies.  Staff, is concerned with what are the number of employees required and how they will be recruited, trained, motivated, rewarded, empowered, and last but not least understand the meaning of team-work and taking responsibility and ownership. Style, refers to the way company and the employees are managed, how they interact, what actions do they take, and the style of management; as well as the level of communication and support.  Shared Values is what the service company and the employees share as far as norms and standards that will drive their behaviour. The latter, of course, being of utmost importance, hence being pivotal to all the rest of S’s described.

My suggestion to any Service Provider out there who is planning to run a successful business with truly satisfied clients and motivated employees, is to take a hard and deep look into their OA and align their internal processes and procedures prior to advertising themselves to their very next client.  The steps are simple to follow and yet of course challenging. Here are the steps:

1.       Identify what areas are in need of alignment – Gap analysis – where are we now?

2.       The optimal design to be determined – where do we want to be?

3.       What needs to be changed for them to get there – management style, process, procedures, employees, equipment, etc.?

4.       Put down the rules and start an awareness program in which everyone becomes well-versed.

5.       Implement the required changes.

6.       Continuously monitor, enforce, review and improve.

The steps mentioned above will/may take some time, but it will be well worth the effort for a service company that plans to stay around and be favoured by many client in the years to come. Keep the alignment chart for your organization handy and let your current and future clients understand that there is a significant advantage for them to be dealing with you and you truly are the number one provider around.

I hope this has been useful.

EL