Expanding your company is a challenge that’s much harder than starting it. Beginning with a small team is an excellent way to keep your business’s vision clear and easy to follow.
However, bringing in more departments and staff can muddle the trajectory of your road towards success. For this reason, it’s necessary to impose organisational alignment to keep everyone in your firm on the same track.
The importance of organisational alignment
Organisational alignment streamlines the mission, vision and values of your company among all employees, from entry-level staff to founding members. Although these abstract concepts may be challenging to define, your company can reinforce and embody them through vertical and horizontal alignment. Through strengthening communication channels and developing effective collaborative spaces, your business can be more unified as a structured whole.
If you want to maintain your company’s vision and integrity, here’s a five-step guide you should follow for successful organisational alignment:
Step#1: Define your company’s common purpose and values
It’s not uncommon for some business owners to have a tunnel vision of their company’s objectives. This prevents them from overseeing the big picture, especially once they start dabbling into expanding their operations. Your recruits and business partners won’t have the same vision you had when starting your company. It’s necessary to define a common goal for all teams, customers and investors that encompasses your brand identity.
Step#2: Delegate your leadership teams
It will be challenging to manage a grown company by yourself, especially if you’re planning on opening branches or expanding to an international market. This is why it’s necessary to build leadership teams that will oversee different aspects of your organisation. These members are responsible for disseminating and implementing your company’s short- and long-term goals for recruits.
Step#3: Identify measurable Key Performance Indicators
Your leadership team’s tasks grow beyond the values your company must embody. Finding specific KPIs to attribute to these goals is an excellent way to share them with newcomers to the organisation. This is why it’s necessary to exercise proper information dissemination to your team members. The more quantifiable your mission and vision are, the more comfortable your staff will be in following them.
Step#4: Reinforce collaboration and accountability
An organisation cannot grow without a streamlined process of collaboration and accountability. Besides establishing a company’s business ethics and code of conduct, your leadership teams must create safe and enriching spaces for growth and mutual development. Each team member must be conscious of the consequences of their responsibilities and be open to accept faults and recognise achievements. This allows them to embody company values in action with their output.
Step#5: Exercise transparency from the top
It’s easier to command a team when they’re open about their grievances and concerns. A company that doesn’t allow safe spaces for suggestions, opinions and criticisms is bound to fall by being close-minded. A leadership team becomes more successful when it has team members who are comfortable expressing themselves and getting the best work conditions to be productive. By listening to valid criticisms and incorporating innovation into your team, your company will continually evolve its quality of service.
Conclusion
Growing your business is a challenging obstacle, especially for start-ups. This is why it’s necessary to have a clear goal and plan that resonates to you and your staff. Thankfully, learning doesn’t stop even if you’re already the head of a company. Receiving expert advice from experienced professionals in the industry is an excellent way to develop as a better boss.
At SKILLFIRE, we help our clients grow their companies by allowing them to develop high-impact teams. Our team uses the successful framework of Objectives and Key Results (OKR) to empower your brand to be as efficient as possible.
Curious to know about the change we can make to your business?
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