The clarity, alignment and commitment process consists of the following five activities:
“All teams must be aligned to the top team, layer by layer, so that everyone is clear on the company’s direction in terms of the results that their team needs to achieve.”
1. Align the top team. Hold a Strategic Alignment Meeting in which the top team creates focus and direction based on strategic and operational priorities. This may sound typical, but one of the missing links in most organizations is clarity on how success will be measured, for example, for product innovation: 10% of total sales will be from two new products/year for the next five years.
In this working meeting, the leadership team reaches consensus on enterprise-wide strategic focus areas, such as:
Operational excellence or leading-edge product innovation
- Success metrics such as incremental gross profit from the shop floor
- Goals such as increasing GP by 20% within two years
- Strategic initiatives such as lean manufacturing.