Horizontal Alignment. This means that every part of the organization has goals and strategies that support the goals and strategies of the organization as a whole. All parts of the organization cooperate to ensure that no division, function, or department achieves its own goals at the expense of another group. In organizations with poor horizontal alignment, you will see feudal behavior where each group attempts to maximize its own resources and achievements, often to the detriment of the others. By optimizing its parts, this sub-optimizes the entire organization.

Vertical Alignment. Goals and strategies created at senior levels must cascade down through the organization so that people at each level understand and contribute to the master plan. Some people refer to this as “line of sight,” ensuring that each person has a clear understanding of what he or she must accomplish and how it contributes to the whole. There must also be alignment from the bottom up, so that planners and strategists can determine the organization’s actual capacity to execute the strategies. This includes time, equipment, skills, and access to required resources. Many organizational initiatives fail because leaders create initiatives that they simply hand off without checking these critical factors.

Alignment of Goals and Activities. Check that organizational goals, strategies, and initiatives are reflected in the daily activities of the organization. Often they are treated as special, one-time projects that interrupt, but do not otherwise impact business-as-usual. The entire point of goals, strategies, and initiatives is to change business-as-usual into a new form.

To illustrate, a consulting firm had a goal to increase sales by 25 percent. Their strategy was to require everyone in a customer-facing position to initiate sales or cross-sell. However, there was nobody in the firm who had professional selling skills, and efforts to provide sales training were always set aside to meet the daily demands of running the business and to handle current customer requests. The only activity that supported sales was a weekly meeting to discuss the pipeline, but it was often cancelled due to busy schedules. While members of the firm often discussed the goal, their day-to-day activities remained out of alignment.

Keeping the organization’s goals and strategies in mind, consider what impact they should be having on the ongoing activities of the organization and look for evidence that this is happening. If there is little or no connection between organizational activities and organizational goals, this is a serious misalignment to address.

Alignment of Practices with Goals, Strategies, and Espoused Values. Practices refer to the way people act on a daily basis, their patterns of making decisions and taking action. Practices also refer to the way people habitually communicate and interact with each other. Management practices model the acceptable and expected behaviors. Observing management practices tells both employees and customers more about the organization than any number of newsletters, memos, advertisements and announcements. Read more about practices in Chapter 3, The Work: Process/Practice.

Unfortunately, practices do not always reflect the organization’s stated goals, strategies and values, causing misalignment. For example, an organization that states it puts customers first, but consistently under-staffs and under-equips customer service units, is out of alignment, as is a large computer company that had the strategic goal of becoming a “best place to work.” In order to attract top talent the company advocated “openness” as a value. However, the executive floor was a luxurious and spacious place nobody below the level of senior officer could visit, workers’ cubicles were tiny, and plans for major changes were never announced before the last minute. This lack of alignment made people cynical, and did not encourage them to put forth their best efforts.

The Organization’s Business Model, Goals, and Strategy. If the business model assumes constant incremental increases in its prices at a time when the economy is tightening and buyers are cutting back, the model is out of alignment with external reality. If strategy demands rapid acquisition of many skilled and experienced specialists at a time when more of them are leaving the labor pool than are entering, the strategy must either provide the resources for extraordinarily attractive recruitment offers, or it must be brought into alignment with the changing labor market.

The Organization’s Value Chain. The outputs of the value chain must be aligned with what the market demands. The functionality, quality, cost, and maintenance of the product or service must match customer requirements. It must not cost too much to produce, and it must conform to any external regulation.

Earlier in this chapter, we looked at tools for examining the organizational context. The Hierarchy Job Aid, Table 4.1, is useful for reviewing and assessing an organization’s alignment in all the areas discussed: horizontal, vertical, goals versus activities, and practices versus goals, strategies and values. This job aid is particularly helpful for doing a systematic review of these areas, which can be diffuse and confusing without a clear guide.

Build a hypothesis. Based on the information you have gathered, what would explain the current situation? A hypothesis might be that the organization is getting poor results because there is a lack of internal alignment between departments. The managers and their groups are competing with each other rather than working together to best the organization’s competitors.

Then ask: What would disprove your hypothesis? What evidence can you find to undermine your current view of the situation? Should you modify your views? For example, you might check into performance for the last few years and discover that the departments worked together very well up until a major acquisition, after which goals and priorities became unclear as the two organizations tried to mesh operations. You might discover that the lack of alignment is between the merged organizations, not departments in general.

Performance improvement professionals test their hypothesis before using it to present a diagnosis; not only to double-check that they are on the right track, but also because it is sure to be challenged and tested by many others, especially at the Organization Level.

We have found that it is very important to partner with our clients during this diagnostic stage. Resist the temptation to go off and do all the interpretive work yourself, then present it as a complete and polished set of conclusions. Engage the client in reviewing the data, then forming and testing hypotheses. It takes time early in the process, but it saves a lot of time later if the client is already on board with the conclusions.

The table is only a partial list of options, to get you started.

Now that you are dealing with highly political issues, consider partnering with an organization development (OD) expert to build a more robust list of options. A skilled OD consultant will suggest approaches that are more closely linked to emotion, values, interpersonal influence, and “soft” techniques than the hard, “scientific” approaches of HPT. A blend of the two can be very productive. OD practitioners are often more successful at influencing people to change, especially those who may have something to lose.

When you have a built the list, evaluate the items using these guidelines:

Both your client and an experienced OD partner can help you greatly with this evaluation process: the client with impact and metrics, the OD partner with the implementation process and a realistic timeline for adoption of change, and both of them with power and acceptance.

Here are some guidelines for working with the client as a consultant and a partner to add value though the work you do and the way that you do it.

Divide and Conquer. This is “the meeting before the meeting.” Rather than trying to sell a new approach to an old problem in a group setting, partner with your client to identify key stakeholders and opinion leaders. Arrange to meet with each individually to discuss your findings and recommendations, get their input, make adjustments, and solicit their help in bringing others in the organization along.

Find a Champion. Ideally, your client will be in a role that commands authority, influence, and control of funding. If not, partner with him to identify someone who has the needed leverage and a stake in the project outcomes. Work together to recruit that individual as a champion for your project. Suppose your client is a training manager who understands HPT. He brought you in to help with a request for team leadership training that is actually a symptom of an organizational alignment issue. Together you could identify a senior executive who is open to new ways of getting results. You could partner to recruit the executive to act as your champion: to legitimize decisions, move roadblocks, and advocate upward for your work.

Identify the Disconnects. What requirements are not being met? If an organization wants a team-building event for executives, what is happening, or not happening, that causes the requestor to believe team building is needed?

For instance, an insurance firm had a sales group with a “team-building problem.” Their goal was to increase sales, and senior management decided this could be done if the sales representatives in field offices only did active prospecting and calling, rather than sitting in the office waiting for prospective customers to call in for a quote. The executives created a new centralized telephone sales force that only responded to customer calls for quotes and followed up on Internet inquiries. All incoming quote calls to offices were switched to a new 800 number, and the change was announced.

This was a good idea. However, the existing field sales organization’s goals were not adjusted for the sudden shift in call volume. The entire field sales organization publicly supported the change, but undermined the centralized sales group to make it fail so their own incoming call volume would be restored. The resulting increase in sales was disappointingly low due to the disconnect between the two sales organizations’ charters and the way their goals were established.

It was clear to senior management that team building was the answer. The performance consultant helped them see that they could blame the middle and lower levels of sales management and the sales representatives for undermining the initiative, but that the real responsibility was theirs for simply announcing a change and failing to adjust allocation of goals, which only they had the authority to do. Organizational alignment has to start at the level where a decision is made.

Find a Positive Way to Ask Questions. The performance consultant in the insurance company above asked, “Have the goals of the field sales organization changed in any way since the beginning of the year?” rather than, “How were the field organization’s sales goals changed to reflect the total absence of incoming calls for quotes?” Think about how the question will be experienced by the person you are asking, especially if she is the decision-maker who put the current procedures in place. Always assume there was an intelligent and positive reason for any action, and frame your questions accordingly. One tip: if any question you want to ask would still make perfect sense if you added the words “you dummy” to the end, rephrase the question.

Keep the Client Informed. To the extent possible, keep the client informed of what you are finding during the research and analysis phase. Avoid surprises, particularly if you discover something that could prove embarrassing to the client in a report or presentation that others will see. Establish a regular check-in time to discuss progress and findings. If you do find risky information, strategize with the client about how best to present it to others.

A colleague discovered that a professional and highly paid group was duplicating procedures at a cost to the organization of $2 million a year. When he shared this privately with his client, the client said, “If you say that, I will lose my job.” Together they agreed that the consultant could report that the duplication was costing the organization “over half a million dollars a year.” That would be truthful as far as it went, would be enough to move the organization to action, but would not cause the client to be fired. It would also give the client room to solve the problem and exceed expectations by $1.5 million which he proceeded to do.

Prepare to Present Your Findings. Organize your findings and prepare to present them in a summary, visual form. Take care to keep alignment issues salient and visible. We usually put the detail—the methodology, questions asked, data, audiences interviewed, and in-depth findings—as attachments to our summary, or in a separate document available on request. When this is ready, present your visual summary to the client with your hypotheses. Then ask what other conclusions she would draw.

If you are working with a client and a sponsor, it is wise to present first to your immediate client, then to the client and the project sponsor together. You may find yourself presenting a third time to the sponsor and an executive team. If at all possible, take your immediate client with you. As you introduce each point, present the joint hypotheses first, then ask what conclusions your audience would draw.

Propose Solutions. Propose two or three alternative “solution packages” to your client, together with the pros and cons (costs/benefits, risks/wins) of each. Then invite input, modify as appropriate, and ask the client to choose which solution package to implement. We have had much success with this approach. If you are working with several levels of clients, you may go through this process a number of times, as described above. However, work to ensure that the solution is selected at the highest possible authority level.

For example, a consultant working with a large auto manufacturer developed three possible sets of solutions: a rock-bottom minimal one, a high-end ideal one, and one between the two that was still robust enough to ensure the systemic problem was solved. He then named each set of solutions for well-known cars: a very cheap, low-prestige car; a top quality car; and a mid-range vehicle. The decision-makers were at the department-head level. They did not want to make a choice that associated them with the rock-bottom vehicle, but they did want to minimize their investment, so they chose the mid-range option.

Explore Implementation Issues. For each solution package you present, make implementation options part of your deliberations with the decision-makers. Implementation is integral to the costs/ benefits and risks/rewards of each solution. Where you can, use the implementation process as another opportunity to add value.

One of us worked with a software implementation firm that wanted to increase profitability by standardizing the use of its project management tools and methodology. Part of the solution was job simulation training that required new project managers to learn the methodology by using specific tools. Obstacles included many officially blessed “tools” that were not fully functional, and newly hired project managers sent to remote client sites with little guidance. Also, the training organization lacked the staff to check the quality of the learners’ work as they completed each task in the simulation. Implementation was structured so each new project manager was assigned to a guide, an experienced project manager. As the learner completed a simulation task, she sent it to the guide for review and feedback. The guides had an answer key for each task. They quickly developed a personal interest in their learners’ success and made a large public fuss if a tool or a step in the methodology was found to be faulty.

This ensured that both experienced and new project managers became very skilled at using the tools and official methodology, and that reputable users brought faulty tools or processes to the organization’s attention to be fixed. Strong relationships between new and experienced project managers were built, creating a community of practice and a support system that went far beyond the original training objectives to add value.

Implementation can often benefit from an OD rather than a scientific approach. While a scientific approach is fitting for analysis and prescription, this is not always the best way to get people to change their practices and beliefs. HPT models are not the only useful models available, and we should look to other fields for what they offer (Wittkuhn, 2008). There are also issues raised in the section on Organizational Politics earlier in this chapter that are part of implementation work. You need both a technical and a political plan to succeed.