Organizational Alignment: What Every Leader Needs to Know

Thomas Baker: Welcome back, Strategy Real Time. I'm Michelle. And I'm Tom. And we're glad that you've joined us today. We are two C-suite executives who are now, we are now focused on helping the next generation of leaders and giving back. So wanting to bring our 30 plus years each to C-suite leaders as well as ⁓ middle managers. So we're glad that you've joined us today. Business achievers of all different sizes and shapes and ages and you know, it's really an opportunity we hope for people to come and share experiences so that whether you are a CEO or you're looking to become a CEO, we hope that this is relevant information for you. We know it is. Right. So from the C-suite this week, we're going to talk about alignment and why alignment is important and why you should care about whether if you're leading a company, leading an organization, why alignment, should be looking at it and saying, am I aligned? Are my folks aligned Or are we misaligned? Or are we misaligned and why? And we're going to tell you some of the common pitfalls about misalignment that you should be on the lookout for as well as practical solutions about what you can do if there is misalignment in your organization, what you can do to fix it. Tom. Well, and you know, we could start basically with some of the high level opportunities that there are. So a lot of times the owners or the CEOs of the company are looking at each quarter, essentially. And a lot of times the employees or the frontline staff or metal management is looking at some of the opportunities as far as flexibility, and that can be even hybrid. So sometimes we start with the CEO looking at numbers, facts and figures, and then the employee and the coworker is looking at lifestyle. So those can be a real misalignment. What are your thoughts on that? I totally agree. And of course, the role, each person's role in the organization is very different, right? The scope. If you are the CEO or you're in the C-suite, the scope of what you do and the responsibilities that you have every day are very different than the people on the front line, whether that's in hotels, hospitality, senior living, ⁓ major ⁓ tech. ⁓ It's very different, right? The way that the scope of responsibility. So I think that a lot of times there can be misalignment just because of just the pure nature of what people are assigned to do every day. And if you don't, if you're not intentional about making sure that you don't have that misalignment, that's when the alignment can happen. Well, I mean, I think that from both sides, right? What's on your radar? What's essentially on your radar? Because I think sometimes we just get into the habit of being present at work, but we're really not. And what I mean by that is that we're being present, but we're focusing on the things that we know are part of that job description that are critical for our success, but we're not really taking the bigger radar. We're not assessing all the terrain, right? Which is a lot of things happening in every organization. What are one of the things, Michelle, that you feel that both sides maybe, have to have on their radar to get that misalignment to alignment? Well, I think that the customer is first and foremost. Whatever the customer or the product that is being offered, if there's focus on the customer and the outcome, a lot of times folks will, CEOs will look just at the results, the monthly results, the quarterly results, you're just looking at the metrics. And even though a lot of companies, your metrics may be good, things may be going well, right? ⁓ That may not indicate, give you a good indication of whether there is misalignment. Maybe your turnover is skyrocketing, right? Maybe the productivity is not as high as what it should be. And you're starting to see things come up, little customer service kind of things to say, things aren't looking real great here. you're saying it can almost transition over into the customer experience? Yes. some instances, if it's service related? Service related, customer service. And even though the metrics may look great today, they may not look great in three months. So there's short term, So think that if you're very keen about looking at the things that maybe aren't in the numbers, not so much in just the numbers, and I think From the C-suite, you get caught up in that, right? Because the job is big. There's a lot of responsibility that you're tasked with. ⁓ so it's hard to concentrate on the little details because you're so into the numbers. And ⁓ maybe you somewhat delegate that, right, to your staff. So if your organization is very large, your CEO or your COO or whatever, they can't be in the daily tasks. They just can. So what they do is they oftentimes, they delegate that. They delegate that to their team, whether that be to the regional vice presidents, whether that be to the HR, the chief of human resources and his or her team. They delegate those kinds of responsibilities to them, which it should be. There's that fine balance between how much do you get involved? and how much do you allow the team that you've hired and that you're trusting to do the job, do the job, right? So I think that's hard. I think that's really hard for CEOs to know exactly when do I step in, when do I not, right? What are those subtle signs that I should be paying attention to? Okay, great. So it's not necessarily a bad thing you're saying to delegate. Absolutely not. Yes, you have to. I mean, there's only so much time in a day. think every executive only has 100 % of their own time, right? So that's why there's different layers in an organization, because you can't do everything. Yeah, one of the things that, you know, I think that, speaking about customers and the customer experiences is that I really believe, let me start with the CEO side. If as a leader and a CEO in an organization, I treated Michelle like a brand, everybody in the organization should be thought of as a brand. And when we think about brands, right, or the services or the products that we're selling, we put a lot of coddling into that, a lot of thought into that, a lot of preparation, a lot of sensitivity. But we don't always do that, and it doesn't always manifest on the co-worker side, does it? Right, right. So from the CEO perspective, imagine if the leaders of companies, no matter how small, mid-size, or large they are, if they took each individual and said, let's create and think of them as a brand. What's their point of differentiation? How far can we take them with the perspective of brand extension? So when we think of extending a brand, we think of different opportunities and how far an individual can go outside of their current job and promote and expand their responsibilities and contribute more to the organization. When we think of brand loyalty, right? There's a lot wrapped around brand loyalty as a CEO. It's taking those same principles that we apply to services and products and think of our people, the people within the organization as an individual brand, really creates a different switch in the brain and helps everybody thrive. Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes... Interesting, isn't it? I mean, it does because it shifts your brain, You won't read that in any book. You're gonna see that only in Strategy Real Time. It's the shift of ⁓ who are we looking at as the customer? And we like to talk about this a lot, that if you're a leader, you've got so many different levels of customers. And ⁓ as a leader, you need to know who those customers are, and you need to know that, and I love what you're saying, is to treat them like the brand. It's not just the product or the service that we're delivering, but... Those folks are a brand too and we need to protect that. We need to protect those folks because really they're carrying out the brand. I mean, that's their job is to carry out the brand. Well, and what the employee needs to do, right? Because we're really offering it from both perspectives. The employee needs to take the same concept and confidence that they have in their personal life with respect to, let's use social media as an example. Everybody, not everybody, but a lot of people aspire to be influencers. So even if you don't aspire to be an influencer, right? Take that same concept and reinvent yourself in the company. Don't be afraid just because you don't necessarily have a social platform at work, but take that concept, Michelle, as a coworker, as an employee, and write down what your vision is. Share what your vision is in a productive way. Don't be passive. Don't wait till you get home on your computer. to become that person. You know what I mean? Be that person at work too. Yeah, that takes me back to what we talked about in our initial episode, our first episode. We talked about being the CEO of your business and your life. Yes, yes. And that you can be both, right? You can. No matter what your level is in the organization, you can be both. But be strategic. But be strategic about it. But I think that as... the leaders in the organization, have to create an environment where people are able to do that. And I think that's whenever people get a little frustrated when they feel like they can't, and we've said this before, bring their best self to work, right? I can write that vision statement, but if the leaders don't create that for me so that I can be my best self at work, then ⁓ I'm as will give up, right? And I think one of the signs that we see, a couple of the signs that we see when there is misalignment, There's an erosion of trust and we just talked about trust in our last episode. It's so important to have trust in the organization and what it can do for the bottom line, what it can do for alignment. ⁓ If you don't have alignment in the organization, you're gonna have lost revenue. Your NOI is gonna drop. I mean, again, you might not see it this month, but you're gonna see it in a few months. ⁓ You'll oftentimes see leadership friction. You'll see a misalignment between decision-making. And I think that this is such an interesting topic because the larger an organization is, the harder it is to make decisions. Can be for sure. Yeah. And you and I talked recently about an entrepreneur that we worked with and ⁓ how when the business was small, it was really, really easy to make decisions. You didn't have to involve a bunch of people, right? You didn't have all those layers, right? So the smaller the organization, the more vision and that goes to your vision statement. the more vision as you can align people around the vision of the company, let them bring their best self to work, their own vision for their own life and have them contribute to that. ⁓ You can do that in a smaller company. I think the challenge for CEOs and C-suite executives is the larger the organization, the harder it can be. And that's why you hit those roadblocks, right? Because as you're growing, things are changing around you and you may or you may not know that it's happening. But the quicker you do identify it, if you're seeing erosion of trust, you're seeing lost revenue, you're seeing leadership friction where people are afraid to make decisions or you're seeing leaders, really good leaders leave the organization, that's what they call the silent exit, right? They become disengaged. That's a real problem because those are your top performers. Your top performers will not stay. if they are not valued and they cannot contribute to the organization's bottom line and feel good about what they're doing. So they're really not seeing it. And that's I think they're seeing it. Sure. do think that some leaders see it very clearly for what it is. And then I think that there are leaders that don't see it that that just kind of go about their way because it's easier. Right. It's easier if you don't see all the little stuff. and you are just looking at the numbers, you're focused on the numbers and the numbers are good and you're trusting your team around you. That's great until it's not. Well, I really appreciate you bringing that up. So, you know, one of the things that, you know, leaders can do, Michelle, CEOs, ⁓ is really become engaged with the coworkers. And one of the things that I think is important that we've experienced from experience is to Understand, going back to that term influence, who are the real leaders in the company? Because they don't have titles necessarily and they're not at the top of the food chain. ⁓ There are people that influence your organization. As a CEO, you must understand that there are quiet, silent leaders that are having tremendous influence on the organization, the people on the organization, as far as how people think, how positive they are, or in some instances, how negative they are. Glass half full versus glass half empty. And CEOs don't recognize that. So a lot of what I see as far as that slow creep and all of sudden I realize that I'm losing productivity, I'm losing retention, I'm losing revenue, I'm losing KPI is because they haven't gone out and really utilize the resources they have. So let me just briefly give a couple examples. When I'm a CEO, okay, or the leader of an organization, I never, ever, ever want to have and get my information. from the same people. And I see so many CEOs making this mistake. You always want to branch out and extend an olive branch to the people in the organization that are offering a different perspective. But people get into the ritual and the habit of seeing the same people and getting the same information. So if we branch ourselves out, go to a different floor, go to a different division, Go to a different plant. Go to a different center. Whatever it is, go to a different hotel. Get that fresh perspective. Number two, watch behavior. When you go by somebody's office and there's three people collected and they're having coffee all the time, that person's probably a silent influencer. And as a CEO, you want to strategically go in there with a cup of coffee too a couple days a week and just be very natural. and model the same behavior that the coworkers do with that silent influencer and see what she or he is saying. What are they really getting at? You know, it's what we call those back channel communications. Does that make sense? ⁓ yeah. mean, I've lived that. I mean, I've lived that for sure. ⁓ It's that old, you know, walking around, right? mean, getting out of your office and ⁓ interacting with people, but observing, right? Observing behaviors. and digging in, just like you said. I mean, I think that's a great analogy. know, Michelle, there's a lot of organizations, they have doors. Doors can be open. We've heard about open door policy, closed door policy. There is nothing more powerful for both the coworker, employee, and the CEO, for the CEO to be on the floor, physically, mentally, working. Do you know what I mean by that? do, and I think again, it goes back to challenge you a little bit because I think CEOs are challenged by time. You only have so much time and the larger your organization is, the less time you have to be in all of your different sites. So you have to really be strategic about and very intentional about how am I going to get out of this office and what am I going to do? How do I... How do I engage with the folks at ⁓ whatever plant or ⁓ community I visit, ⁓ building, office building? What's my intention? And how do I get there? And I think that CEOs that I've worked with and I've encountered, and I've encountered this myself as I came up through the ranks of leadership, ⁓ I really struggled with do I get in somebody else's business, right? Do I, that's the VP's job or that's the senior vice president's job. I need to let them do it. If I go in, will it look like I don't trust them? You know, I don't want to do that. And I think that there's a real fine balance. Again, that's where the intention is. Setting the intention and making sure that everybody knows that me showing up at a plant or a community doesn't mean that I am spying on them. I'm checking on the culture. And then if we all are checking on the culture, and that's one takeaway that you can take from this, is that, you know, check your culture. What's your culture say? Right? And it goes to what the silent folks, right? What's the silent culture that we may not know about? And what is the culture on paper? And then what is it actually? And take stock of that and maybe do a culture audit. If you really feel like there's starting to be real misalignment, Some of those things that we saw, we talked about trust, lost revenue, ⁓ silent exit, know, ⁓ revenue is decreasing. If you're starting to see those signs, do a culture audit, whether that's doing what you just said is going out, observing, making sure you sit down, have the cup of coffee, or maybe you do a full blown structure or an audit, a culture audit with a consultant. Well, one of the things that when we're working with CEOs that seem to work really well is that there's always a crisis du jour. Yes. In any organization, how small or how large that we're working with. And what we like to tell people from both perspectives, again, employee and CEO, is that take your crisis du jour, because that's with good intentions, and go to that location or within your corporate office and be visible. What do I mean? Instead of the door being shut, go to an office or go to an open space where there's phones and gather those individuals from the different disciplines and work live. Now, what do I mean by that? It's almost like you're in a fishbowl, right? That's intentional. If CEOs put themselves in fishbowls more with employees or with coworkers and together with good intention, solve the immediacy of the problem. right now that they're dealing with. And not worry about the big picture, but work on the problem right now. Everybody that walks by and observes that gets a great feeling. Gets a great feeling. And also do something with it. mean, do something with the information, right? If you gather information and it's not great information, you encounter a problem or a situation. you gotta dig in and you gotta get to the bottom of it. Because the worst thing that could happen is for you to go out, spend time with those folks, get the information, and then not do anything with it if something needs to be solved or Well, you're working live. You're working live. You're working live. That's the whole point. Also, I just wanna say, sometimes in an organization, it's so big and complex that you feel like, don't know if I can tackle that one. One, do I have the energy? Does the company have the bandwidth? Is it worth it? Maybe it'll go away. You know, if you're saying all of that and you're out there and you're saying, I think maybe this is me, right? I think this is happening in my department that I'm responsible for. And you don't have to be C-suite. You can be middle management. You can be at the VP level, whatever. And you're saying, you know, I see myself here. ⁓ You can take charge of that. You can create a plan. You don't need the company to do it. But a lot of times I think that the The the problem, the larger the organization, sometimes people just don't have the bandwidth or the energy or think they can tackle it because it's too big. And I'm saying to you, you can. You can. Have the courage. Have the courage to tackle it, whether you're middle management, whether you're at the C-suite. Tackle it because it's only going to come and it's going to bite you. It's going to bite you if you don't. Well, you've got to definitely stop running from it because good news, bad news doesn't get better with time. unfortunate, but that's the facts. you know, if we go back to, you know, that concept of just for simplicity purposes, treating everybody like a brand, then you begin to identify what's Michelle's strength is that brand, what's Tim's strengths, what's Susan's strengths, what's Bob's strengths. You can begin to match those strengths in the organization by those individuals, by their brand on who can help you get out of that precarious situation that you're in. So when things start to get ahead of you and you start to feel like you're losing control as a CEO. The best thing you can do to work your way out of that is to go to those individuals and ask them for what? Help. Studies have shown, Michelle, over and over and over again, that people simply ask for help. 90 % of the time, people are willing to help. What's the problem? People never ask. Why do you think that is? I think we have been trained and brought up and have been, you know, basically, ⁓ let's say brainwashed perhaps to think that we have to do everything on our own, that we have to be the center of the universe. And what we know about the universe is everything's connected in one way, shape or another. But we let the ego and we let the pride And we let perhaps some things that we've dealt with growing up or experiences that we've had, good, bad, or indifferent, influence that big concept that we are a universe and we are all connected. So we've got to keep going back to that as the core, as opposed to letting things that have negatively influenced isolate us more and more so that we feel so vulnerable and detached. If we can get CEOs and employees to connect on that level, be a whole new world. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, totally. Totally. So... I hope I answered your question. no. That was really great. So things that we should look for in an organization for misalignment, right? I think if you... those subtle changes, the... be aware that the financials might look good this month, but if they start to decline... And then there are others. There are other metrics too, like customer satisfaction surveys. engagement surveys from your co-worker surveys, those kinds of things. Those will tell you little, little, little signs and turnover. ⁓ I mean, those are some of the things, retention, ⁓ customer ⁓ complaints, those kinds of things. So be aware and look for those signs of misalignment and then tackle them, hit them head on. Right. And do a culture audit. Take a look at what your culture says on paper, what people are doing and get out of your office, spend time, ask questions. So important to do. ⁓ And then create, I'm suggesting create a plan, right? Based on all that information that you get. Create a plan, put it on paper, bring your team together. The same thing you just suggested. All of these people that really tap into They want to help. They're there for a reason. Put together a plan. Create a new vision. Create a new plan to get where you want to go and empower folks to be a part of that plan. ⁓ And then execute on it. Whether that's in regular meetings with your team, whether that's individual meetings with your team, whether that's retreats, whether that's whatever. Celebrate, celebrate results, good results. that we talked about that the last time, you know, in our last episode about creating a culture of trust, celebrate when you do well, right? Make sure that you understand what's happening with folks that maybe aren't performing well and you're helping them get better. Those kinds of things. Is there anything else, Tom, that we should give our audience like helpful practical tips to take away? I think that that's great way to, you know, bring to people's attention that in the scope of what you do in a day, do not be afraid to look wider. If you imagine yourself at the edge of a cliff in a good way, sitting there peacefully, looking out on the big terrain, okay, that will help in some different situations, employees and the CEO, look at things differently. It's so big and it's so broad. We have to intentionally narrow it down to what we haven't paid attention to, what we don't have on our radar. So imagine, this is all live, so we're just, but I'm on the edge of the cliff and I'm looking out. I may not see that single tree down on that terrain. I may not see that animal or that bird, right? So in other words, I'm going out there and I'm just looking, but I'm not looking at the detail. I'm not seeing. the magic. I'm not seeing the individuals. I'm not seeing the brands. I'm not seeing the uniqueness. I'm not seeing the fine points within the leaf of the tree. If CEOs and employees went to the edge of the cliff and looked out on the terrain and saw the broad big picture, but then stepped back and really looked for the detail and the finest of what they don't do day to day, that would be a great start to those solutions to what you've just recommended. Yeah, I love that, Tom. That's so great. That's so great. So join us each week. ⁓ We're so glad that you've tuned into us and we would love for you to continue and subscribe at Strategy Real Time. You can subscribe. on YouTube, Spotify, Apple. and certainly check us out on our website. And we'd also love to hear from you. Comment on this podcast or any of the other ones. We're looking- Something you wanna talk Yeah, we're looking for your comments. We're looking for your feedback and certainly looking for suggestions on future podcasts. We wanna make the show relevant to you. Yes. And whatever the topic is that's important to them, it becomes important to us. That's right, that's right. Thanks, take care. Take care, thanks everybody.