As an organizational leader, how long has it been since you have seen, read, or heard someone pitching you on their sure-thing strategy to take you to the next level? In today’s world, it probably hasn’t been long. Our email inboxes, LinkedIn, and even TikTok feeds are filled with strategy, branding, leadership, and culture “consultants” pitching how their solution is THE solution for you and your organization. Many of these solutions can be fantastic and, in a perfect world, can make a massive difference for your organization. More often, you can find yourself being pulled by a misaligned organization off the road into the mud like a car that pulls you away from center.
As a leader, It can be maddening to invest so much human capital and financial capital resources into the process, only to be stranded in the off-road mud with their teams shortly after the consultant is gone. So, why does this happen?
When they are “stuck in the mud” as an organization, leadership often will isolate one problem of clear weakness and focus on that as a way to jolt them out of the mud and start moving forward in a straight line again. They might make confident “If we” statements that sound something like:
Sound familiar? Sometimes leaders focus on the tire causing the biggest issue, but fail to align the rest during the fix. Here is another way to think about it. Have you heard the infamous Peter Drucker quote, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”? It seems like a simple enough statement and oftentimes can be true. Peter is essentially saying that you can have the best strategy on the planet in your industry, but if your organizational culture isn’t great, you will likely fail at executing it.
The reality is, you need complete alignment in three key areas of your organization:
If any of these aren’t in alignment with one or both of the other areas of your organization, it will ultimately get stuck. Obviously, there may be other issues (i.e. a broken sales process, a misaligned brand, etc.), but without alignment of these key areas, troubleshooting other problems won’t likely see more than short-term results.
Back to the car example. Much like when you hit a big pothole on the road with one of your tires, it gets out of sync with the other tires of your car and literally “fights” against them to control the direction of your car. In automotive terms, misalignment of the tires causes a reduction of life of your tires, additional stress on your drivetrain and a lot of extra attention from the driver to ensure the car remains on the road.
If you hire a traditional strategy consultant, they are going to focus on the strategy that assumes alignment of your culture and leadership. If there are issues with your culture, that wheel will pull your organization consistently away from the strategy and perhaps your leadership. The same can be true if with outside leadership and culture guru’s who don’t consider value on the strategy of the business. It can put a tremendous strain on your team and even land your organization off the road, truly “stuck in the mud”!
At LoudX, we understand the exponential importance of alignment. That is why we specialize in supporting the alignment of your strategy, culture and leadership of your organization. There are no “out of the box” solutions. What worked for another organization, likely won’t work for yours unless your culture and leadership are identical. Out team facilitates this alignment through workshops that address each of these crucial areas. The result is an alignment from your team that get’s you back on the road again.
Connect with us to learn more about how we empower your team to create alignment at hello@loudxstudio.com.
