The Aligned Organization: Executive Summary

White paper explains why alignment is so elusive and offers three steps to achieving it

Every organization manages performance – in one way or another – in an attempt to optimize the organization as a whole while meeting the needs of internal and external stakeholders. However, many people loosely define "performance management" as a reporting effort. The organization that wants to proactively improve performance – not just report on it – must have sufficient answers for these questions: 

• Do I have all the information I need to understand performance today across the enterprise?
• Have I articulated and communicated the strategy in a way that reflects business priorities?
• Am I able to drive these priorities throughout the organization?

In an unforgiving business climate, there is no room for the inefficiency that results from misalignment. Success requires alignment – a collaborative progress toward a shared vision. This vision is supported by dynamic knowledge of the full impact of business activities, processes and relationships, and optimizing outcomes for multiple stakeholders.

Historically, this utopian vision has been easier to endorse than to achieve. It can even be a challenge to align within a single department. People often don't know how their activities contribute to business objectives and what measures really denote success. Managers could be driving toward departmental goals that actually undermine higher-level strategy.

The technology is currently available to support the alignment of strategy and execution across the organization and, in the process, to support the necessary cultural change as well.

To learn more, including the three key steps for achieving alignment, register now to download this white paper:  The Aligned Organization .