Commentary: Executive Team Alignment is More Essential Now Than Ever

Leadership teams are no strangers to changes and challenges related to successfully executing strategic objectives. Add in a global pandemic, a workforce that is almost totally remote, and challenges tend to multiply. So how can organizations keep engagement levels high while creating alignment with one another over these key priorities?

The key is alignment from within the very body that determines the direction of the organization: the executive team.

Sure, many of you are reading that last line, rolling your eyes, and sighing: “No kidding!” Sure, it sounds elementary. So was legendary basketball coach John Wooden’s request for his UCLA basketball teams to “practice” putting their socks on during the first practice of the season. His reasoning? If you don’t put your socks on correctly, you might develop blisters, which will negatively impact the team.

Back to the leadership teams: trust me, if it were that simple, literally every organization would be operating with high levels of employee engagement, maximum efficiency, and profitability that would keep every shareholder and stakeholder ecstatic.

A quick glance of the business landscape tells us this is most certainly not the case. So, how can you create this alignment?

Through a series of powerful, authentic, robust, and transparent conversations.

The first step in this process is to take a long look at how you arrived at where you currently are. What were the key conversations that took place, and with whom, the key decisions that you made, and didn’t make that helped to form the reality that is your current state?

Take a close look — where were we, the leadership team, and are they in alignment? Where were we a little bit off and, what was the impact of us not all being on the same page? How did this misalignment affect our communication, our execution? How did this impact the people working with and for us? How did it impact our customers? How can we benefit from that great gift of hindsight to lay the foundation of how we will communicate and align with each other moving forward?

Speaking of moving forward: after aligning the strategy that you want to execute, who are the key people who will be responsible for putting that strategy into action, and how will you communicate with them to ensure this alignment stays intact? Hearing a consistent message is one thing; feeling that message is another thing altogether.

Endless research has been conducted showing the difference between “hearing” strategy – this is where we are going and how we will get there – and “feeling” strategy. This is why we are moving in this direction and how what you do is key to all of us succeeding.

To ensure high levels of alignment, engagement and productivity, the organization, the people who will be doing the work to get us to where we need to be, require the same level of clarity that the executive team has.

Admittedly, this is nothing new. Yet, countless executive teams have struggled with this in the best of times, to say nothing of the complicated world that we have operated in over the past year. To offset the economic impact of a global pandemic, much of the focus has been on speed and agility. Yet, the best laid plans will almost always fall victim to misalignment and a poor understanding of why we are moving in this direction.

To address alignment challenges, we are elated to be working with NBA star and U.S. Olympian Charles Smith (pictured) on our new Executive Team Coaching Session.

Since stepping off the court after a decade of playing for the Los Angeles Clippers, San Antonio Spurs and New York Knicks, he now dominates the world of business as CEO of Lifestyle Services Group and through leadership coaching as a Fierce Facilitator. Learn more about Fierce Executive Team Coaching.

This article was edited and published by Rick Weinberg, California Business Journal’s Founder, Publisher and Editor-in-Chief. Click here for Rick Weinberg’s biography.

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