The Importance of Alignment

Several years ago, someone robbed our house while we slept! I will always remember that night. It was a warm, muggy evening in Perth, Western Australia. The temperatures were in the high 30's on the Celsius gauge (that's nearly 100 degrees Fahrenheit). I had been working in a room with a window facing the front yard. I had opened the window to let the air in as it was getting unbearably stuffy and hot as I worked.

When I decided to turn in for the night, I forgot to close the windows. In the middle of the night, my wife and I were rudely awakened by flashlights shone onto our eyes. As I peered out of my sleepiness, I heard these rough voices barking behind the flashlights, "Police! Police! Wake up! Wake up!"

At first I thought some crazy friends were playing a joke on us. I even entertained the thought that we might have been victims of some shock segment of a popular late night TV show.

However these fleeting thoughts were quickly squashed when I realized that they were the voices of a couple of real life cops who had evidently entered our home. Apparently, they were called by a passing taxi driver who saw the front yard of our house strewn with our belongings, and our front door wide open.

You see, burglars had crept into our house while we slept through the opened window, and had taken out our drawers and chests and emptied them in the front yard, looking for cash or valuables.

By the time the cops woke us, almost every room in the house had been ransacked. We were shocked out of our minds and devastatingly overwhelmed with feelings of having been violated.

You can imagine that I was very much tuned in to security consciousness in the next couple of days. So when I heard a radio advertisement for a residential security system, I quickly jotted down the phone number and called for an appointment.

I got a busy signal. Their ads must have been too effective! So I called my wife to ask her to call while I went to my business meeting. My wife called and spoke to a receptionist who responded that someone would call back. We waited a couple of days for the callback, but no one did. So my wife called again, getting the same assurance. Yet another day passed and no one had called. So my wife tried again the next day, and this time explained that she had already called twice earlier. The telephonist became defensive. She told my wife that everyone was busy so she should just be patient and wait! But, no one ever did call back.

Neither did us! We decided to take our business elsewhere!

Here was the issue: that company failed to align their systems and their team with the message of their ad campaign.

They may have a brilliant product. They may have a compelling message. But, if their system fails them (my call couldn’t get through the first time I called), and then their people do not follow through, and worse yet, even turn people off(!), then the company has failed to realize the full potential of their investment.

This works the same for any team: whether you’re an athletic team, or a group, or even a family, you need to align your vision, and know your shared goals so that you can pull together to leverage each other in order to achieve what you all desire together.

It is espcially critical that there is alignment in a business. For instance, many business leaders talk about empowerment. They talk it, they believe in it, but when it comes to practice, the empowerment may not be fully executed because the systems and structures within the business organization inhibit empowerment of the employees in critical ways. If employees do not have access to critical information, for instance, they are then not truly empowered to act in the best interest of clients and/or their company. If they are permited access to key information, but the systems fail them, then the empowerment may just be "all talk" and turn out to be "pseudo-empowerment". Worse yet, if the talk about empowerment is not followed up with business practices and attitudes among both the executive and line management that are empowering.

So, what do you think? Do you have examples to share where a misalignment between the vision, systems and people affects the effectiveness of the group? Or do you have anything to add to the above, or any comments? I appreciate your feedback!