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Innovation

Alignment above all

Technology may change rapidly, but the fundamentals of effective communication not so much.

The role played by clarity in achieving successful results should not be a surprise. What is surprising is how often it can be overlooked.

Regardless of its nature, the success or failure of any initiative will rely to a large extent on the degree of alignment amongst those involved. The question “what are we building” can yield as many answers as there are factions, and this is true of teams from enterprises to startups.

Executive decisions are rightly expected to be followed by action. But the fear that accompanies an instruction to proceed often kills the opportunity to think deeply about desired outcomes. Agile dogma tells us we need to move fast. The fear of being seen to not be moving can generate countless docs and meetings as attempts are made to assert the rightness of one set of priorities over another. Lots of noise, very little signal, and a dearth of alignment. 

The lure of consensus always looms large. After all, consensus can begin to get everyone moving. At its worst consensus is a form of groupthink. It may be capable of placating a fractious group and get them through to the next meeting. It is unlikely to impress customers however, who won’t care if you reached consensus, but will certainly sense a lack of alignment in the construction of their product or service.

Consensus is tactical; alignment is strategic.

Alignment involves orientation to a direction and commitment to a purpose. It can’t be articulated in purely marketing terms. Or design terms. Or engineering terms. And it must embody unambiguous support, across functions, to the aims of the project. Alignment should release every discipline to plan its contribution to clearly understood outcomes.

The good news is that achieving alignment is not alchemy. Any number of tools or frameworks can assist with driving a team, or multiple teams, towards an aligned state.

As both an exponent and practitioner I will always promote the design thinking process as a fast track to alignment. Your mileage may vary; anything capable of cutting across disciplines and reframing a challenge in objective terms is a positive step.

The most successful teams I have encountered used value as the ultimate framing – specifically, how is it being created or enhanced for the business, and for customers. Anything less than clarity around both of these will lead to muddy goals and unsatisfactory outcomes. We all deal with ambiguity in our working lives. But where this translates to vagueness, danger lies.

“What problem are we solving?” is an easy – even obvious – question to ask, but it can be problematic to answer definitively. It may even take an unpopular pause for breath to do it. To quote Covey, “With people, slow is fast and fast is slow.” 

An aligned team will move faster, and with greater precision, than one without it. 

The investment of time and rigour in achieving true alignment will repay itself many times over. It is worth fighting for.