Does your company’s Strategy Shape Daily Decisions
ALIGN Practice: Legitimize
What is your organization trying to accomplish, and what current reality does your strategy need to address?
Strategy is about making choices grounded in current reality, so the organization can move toward where it wants to be while addressing the opportunities and obstacles in front of it.
Strategic plans often become collections of aspirations when what is needed is practical direction. A useful strategy clarifies where the organization is trying to go, what matters most, what priorities will guide decisions, and how daily work should move in that direction.
In Good Strategy/Bad Strategy, Richard Rumelt describes good strategy as including a diagnosis, a guiding policy, and coherent action.
In practical terms:
What challenge, opportunity, or change in conditions needs attention?
What matters most now?
What priorities will guide our decisions?
What choices are we making about how to move forward?
What actions will move us in that direction?
When that clarity exists, people can make decisions more expediently, act with cohesion across the organization, and understand how their contributions connect to what the organization is trying to accomplish.
In ALIGN℠, this is the practice of Legitimize: creating shared direction by naming what matters most, setting priorities, and making the direction clear enough that people can act with confidence.
One of the statements in the ALIGNment Snapshot reads: We have a clear strategy that informs decisions and daily work, and people understand what we are working toward and why it matters.
The ALIGNment Snapshot is a ten-minute reflection tool that helps leaders see where strategy, culture, and execution are working together, and where closer attention is needed.