Misalignment of purpose, plan, process and people wastes staggering amounts of organizational energy and resource every day.
Most staggering is not that the majority of leaders don't recognize this . . MOST Staggering is that leaders create this through lack of organizational awareness and sanction it through neglect.
Early in our education we learned that the shortest distance between to points is a straight line. To illustrate this, our intsructor made two dots on the writting surface and then drew a straight line from one dot to the other.
Little did we know at the time that this simple excercise represented the dynamic interrelationship and interplay between the concepts of efficiency and efficacy.
Unfortunately for business leaders, what worked so well and looked so easy on paper, in one-dimension, can be incredibly difficult and messy in the multiple dimensions of the modern work environment.
When organizational structures are misaligned they beome less efficient and less effective. When processes have too many steps, redundant steps, and/or unnecessary steps they become less efficient and less effictive. When personalities among team members conflict rather than complement performance becomes less efficient and less effective. When decision making processes are ill-defined or overly complex decision making within the organization becomes less efficient and less effective. On and on and on . .
Here is the really sobering thing for every leader to realize -- when all of the conditions above exist the negative impact on efficiency and efficacy isn't simple, it is compound!
Most businesses I consult are hemorrhaging "energy" due to rampant misalignment. Empployees are wearing down, customers are growing dissatisfied, money is being lost, time is being wasted, etc. This makes any already difficult business all the more difficult.
The good news is that the solutions are often much more simple than they appear. Creating alignment can take time, requires freeing up appropriate energy for the task and absolutely takes focus.
Nonetheless, it is SO worth it. Notice that I did not say it was easy.
Inertia, personalities, human desire for comfort rather than change and a multitude of other real world factors will try to distract you from creating alignment. For the good of the organization, all of these things must be recognized and become things to appropriately deal with rather than obstacles to progress. In all cases, alignment must be passionately pursued.
Why? Because just as the presence of mislaignment causes compound negative impact on an organization through loss of "energy",in the same way creating alignment can have compaound positive impact on an organization.
When you look at your organization, ask this question, "Is this (process/structure/etc) as well aligned as it can be?
Remember, the shortest distance (most efficient and effective) between two points (starting point and strategic objective) is a straight line (alignment).