During world war II, the Allied Air force was engaged in a fierce battle with their German counterparts over the
Mediterranean Sea. From the Allied point of view, the goal of the campaign was to prevent the German supply ships from reaching the destination ports. At the start of the campaign, the allied pilots focused on shooting down as many enemy planes as possible. Some of the allied pilots emerged as stars with significant enemy casualties to their credit. However, the team still could not prevent some of the enemy ships from crossing.
With the battle raging and the team still far from reaching the goal, the Allied team needed to go back to the drawing board. The team realized that it was easy for a pilot to focus only on the immediate vicinity and try to shoot as many enemy planes as possible. However, for the team to succeed, a pilot needed to be fully aware of how the team was doing as a whole on their mission. Even after shooting down many enemy planes, you could not call the mission successful if some of the enemy ships actually reached their destination. A well coordinated attack, on the other hand, where each pilot was aware of the overall landscape of the attack (e.g., was able to provide help to others where needed) could lead to success even with low number of enemy casualties for individual pilots.
With the pilots fully aligned on the team goal, the team was able to succeed in their mission!
In today’s fast paced business environment of intense global competition, and turbulent markets it is common for an organization to see business priorities change frequently. In this dynamic environment, how do you ensure that each individual in your organization is working on the right activities? With multiple business units focused on its own product or service, how do you guarantee that for the organization as a whole, the “enterprise value” is not less than sum of its parts?
Goal alignment ensures that people from top to bottom of an organization are working towards similar goals. With proper goal alignment, each person within an organization can clearly see the direction of the business and understand how the activities they are engaged in contributes to meeting the overall organization goals.
To enable sustained alignment, it is extremely important for an employee to have “line of sight” with their organization’s strategic objectives. “Line of sight (LOS) is an employee’s understanding of the organization’s goals and what actions are necessary to contribute to those objectives. Line of Sight is often of greatest importance at lower organizational levels, where employees have the most contact with customers and products”.
Proper alignment of individual and team goals with overall organizational goals leads to higher workforce productivity and better business results!
Hi Bhaskar,
you made a good point there. The ordinary employee often does not have a direct Line-of-Sight to the company goals. He only sees his desk and does what he is told to do. Thinking ahead has become rare… shooting down an enemy and painting a flag beside your cockpit might gain you the respect of your comrades but does little help to achieve the big goal.
I will use your pilot story in my next team meeting. Thanks.
Hi,
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. Great to hear that you found the post useful.
regards,
Bhaskar