One of my favorite metaphors for an organization is that of a crowd of people in a large rowboat.  When you are leading an organization, a unit, or a team – how can you be sure that everyone is aiming for the same destination and rowing together to get there?   In other words, how can you tell if your organization is aligned?

There are many aspects of alignment.  Today, I’d like to focus on alignment at the level of the senior leadership team. 

Organization development expert, Tom Wilkes, has worked with many executive teams to improve team performance and organizational outcomes.  As Tom describes it, success hinges on alignment.  He recently shared this simple, but powerful exercise for assessing whether or not your team is on the same page when it comes to priorities: 

• Give each member of the leadership team 3 index cards. 
• Instruct the team to write down the 3 most pressing priorities for the organization (using a separate card for each).
• Gather and post the cards on a wall or whiteboard, grouping them by topic/theme.

One team that Tom worked with had said in advance of this exercise that they were most definitely in agreement on priorities.  After this exercise, they had 36 different topics on the wall – an obviously a lot of work to do to get to agreement and eventually alignment.

For more on assessing and ensuring alignment check out Patrick Lencioni’s book, Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars and Yves L. Doz and Mikko Kosonen’s HBR article, The New Deal at the Top.