If an organisation's mission, vision, goals, strategies and plans are not aligned, the organisation is likely to fail. This is because each of these documents is created or revised in isolation from the others or because they are looked at once per year and then successfully avoided until the following year.
As CEO, you play a vital role in setting and maintaining the direction of your company. You are responsible for ensuring that your team is focused and aligned with your company's goals. This alignment is a continuous process to ensure everyone works together efficiently towards a common goal.
The question now is, how do you align your employees with your company goals? Read on as Stuart Andrews, an executive coach in Australia, shares some tips:
Share the Company Vision
Your employees need to know the company story and the vision. They need to see where the company came from, its values, and where the company is going. Sharing the company story will help your employees understand the company's mission and how their work fits into the bigger picture.
Establish a Real Time Feedback Process
Establishing a process is critical to ensure that your employees are aligned with your company goals. This process should include communicating your goals to your employees and then working with them to create a plan to help them meet them.
It is also essential to provide feedback to your employees regularly. This feedback should be positive yet, at the same time, constructive, and it should help them to see how their performance is impacting the company's goals.
Finally, you should also create a system of rewards and recognition for employees who meet or exceed your company's goals. This will help motivate your staff to continue working hard to achieve success.
Make Sure You Communicate Your Expectations Clearly
As the owner of a business / division or a manager, you need to take the time to communicate your company's goals to your employees. This way, they can understand what is expected of them and align their own goals with the objectives of the business.
Push for Weekly Accountability
When it comes to aligning your employees with your company goals, one of the best things you can do is to push for weekly accountability. This means setting up a system where each employee is accountable for meeting specific weekly goals. Doing this will help ensure everyone is on the same page and working towards the same objectives.
There are a number of ways that you can go about setting up a weekly accountability system that aligns to the overall strategy and outcomes. There are many ways to achieve this without significant cost that will help ensure teams are working on the right tasks and are aligned to the overall organisational objectives. Transparency of progress is not just for performance tracking but to ensure constant alignment especially with so much change and disruption. It’s important that teams get together regularly to foster the relationships, share the wins and discuss the challenges they are facing especially when impacting progress of deliverables. Promoting constant and real-time feedback is imperative to stay on track and ensure a high performing team.
Conclusion
Aligning employees with company goals can be challenging, but it is possible with a shared vision, the right conversations, alignment to outcomes and leveraging transparent communication.
Managers can do a few key things to make this happen, such as setting clear expectations, sharing their story, and setting up a weekly accountability system.
When employees are aligned with company goals and have a mechanism to voice their opinions, motivation and productivity will increase which will improve morale and organisational profitability. If you need help ensuring your employees are aligned with your company goals, look to executive coaching where you can leverage helpful strategies on building high performing teams.
Stuart Andrews is a recognised and trusted executive coach who can help you improve the way you lead your organisation. Contact us today to know how we can help you or get a copy of Stuart’s book where you’ll uncover more insights from his executive coaching experience!