At SHIFTPOINTS, we believe that alignment is the ultimate competitive advantage.
But a misaligned executive team will never create an aligned company.
Therefore, we developed The Navigation IndexTM, a proprietary survey designed to assess Executive Team Alignment (ETA).
The Navigation Index is comprised of twelve questions, which are aligned with the SHIFTPOINTS Drive One Direction® model.
SHIFTPOINTS analyzes the results first by looking at the average score for each question. This provides insight into the best and worst performing areas of the organization.
In addition, we look for dispersion among the responses. As a result, we are able to identify areas where the organization’s executives disagree about a particular dimension of performance.
For example, we have worked with clients where the CEO "strongly agreed" that the organization’s vision was crystal-clear, but the executives reporting to him did not share that opinion.
This kind of information provides critical insights that are essential to unleashing the accelerating power of alignment.
EXECUTIVE TEAM ALIGNMENT
We believe that your corporate executive team is ultimately responsible for creating alignment.
Therefore, they must operate as One Team!
This starts with your CEO. Your CEO must be the role model and operate as the company’s Chief Alignment Officer.
Second, the entire corporate executive team must embrace alignment as a critical corporate initiative. There are several reasons for this:
- The corporate executive team is ultimately responsible for aligning the company’s multiple divisions, departments, functions, and geographies. Often, these groups operate very independently from one another on a day-to-day basis and only come together at executive team meetings.
- The corporate executive team is ultimately responsible for aligning the interests of the company’s multiple stakeholders. These stakeholders include investors, creditors, employees, boards, vendors, customers, governments, the communities where you operate, and more. These stakeholders often have competing interests which must be aligned.
- The corporate executive team is ultimately responsible for aligning the company’s multiple strategies, tactics, goals, priorities, and initiatives into a coherent corporate strategic plan.
- The corporate executive team is ultimately responsible for aligning the company’s resources—both human and financial—with the corporate strategy. Budgets must be allocated. Headcounts must be approved.
- Each corporate executive has the responsibility to align their functional area. The Chief Financial Officer must consolidate the budgets. The Chief Marketing Officer must integrate the marketing plans. The Chief Sales Officer must roll up the sales forecasts.
Finally, the corporate team “sets the bar” for alignment. If they are not aligned as One Team, the rest of the organization will be dysfunctional. They must be role models for alignment. A misaligned executive team will never create an aligned company.
That is worth repeating: A misaligned executive team will never create an aligned company.
