Measuring organisational alignment

Organisational alignment as competitive advantage

Measuring organisational alignment is essential at each stage of your effort, just as you would with any other priority business initiative.

Measuring organisational alignment allows companies to identify backsliding, correct course where needed and demonstrate tangible evidence of improvement – which can help to maintain positive momentum over the long haul.

Aligned organisational culture

Business performance

A well-constructed performance measurement system helps drive organisational alignment and provides managers with timely information about adverse conditions so action can be taken to prevent undesirable consequences.

Are key performance indicators improving? Are relevant growth targets being reached? What is happening with less obvious indicators, such as decreases in customer complaints?

Customer surveys

If your company commissions routine customer surveys, consider adapting these tools to also provide a periodic measure of alignment.

Market perceptions

If you organization acquires market research data, consider adapting that process to provide data reflecting customer and market perceptions of company, brand, and product alignment.

Employee surveys

Are key cultural attitudes moving in the right direction, as indicated by the results of employee surveys? This last area is usually the slowest to show improvement. Most people will shift their thinking only after new behaviors have led to results that matter – and thereby been validated.

Employee turnover

If your company routinely tracks employee turnover, consider adapting this process to include information gathering related to perceptions of alignment or misalignment.

Critical behaviors

Have enough people at multiple levels started to exhibit the few behaviors that matter most?

Don’t forget to tell about it

If not approached correctly, measurement efforts can quickly become cumbersome, time-consuming, and expensive. It’s better to include a few carefully designed, specific behavioral measurements in existing scorecards and reporting mechanisms, rather than invent extensive new systems and surveys.

When designing cultural metrics, remember that you get what you measure.

Don’t let culture eat strategy

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Measuring organisational alignment – You get what you measure — http://www.torbenrick.eu/t/r/ade

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