If I overlook some of my personal fiascos such as:

• the airline that sold us nonstop tickets to London and then put us on a plane that couldn’t cross the Atlantic without refueling and
• the major appliance manufacturer with initials GE that decided it was easier to replace our six-month-old washing machine instead of sending a repairman to make adjustments – and then left us with a brand new machine that won’t run at all

If I ignore those, and, instead, consider the many businesses I’ve worked with or talked with recently as a consultant, I’m pretty impressed. Lots of them are doing many things really well. But, of course, everyone can do better. So let me share some of the areas where I see the most pain and the greatest opportunity for improvement.

Strategic Alignment

Strong strategic alignment lends clarity to decisions and empowers employees. Slow decisions, frustrated employees, failed initiatives, insufficient resources, and a lack of commitment are just some of the signs of poor strategic alignment. Just in the last month, I’ve seen this evidence first-hand in a multi-billion dollar global company and a $30 million private manufacturer. Same symptoms. Same diagnose. And a pretty simple solution. Too bad there aren’t sensors that tally the waste and trigger an app every time another $10,000 or $100,000 is wasted due to poor strategic alignment!

Decisions

Smart, disciplined decision making leverages the collective brainpower of your team, produces better decisions, wastes no time, and results in strong agreement. I rarely encounter organizations that do this well.

The first question is do you have a decision process? If you don’t have a process, your decisions are at the mercy of personalities, politics, individual passions, fluctuating energy levels, groupthink, conflict tolerance, the least offensive idea syndrome, and luck. Ask your employees about your process. I doubt you will find even two people able to articulate an actual process, agree on the steps involved, and use a shared vocabulary to describe it. Unless, of course, they’ve been reading my books and articles regularly!

The second question to ask involves decision roles. Do people know who is making each decision and what role they are expected to play? If not, you are wasting both their talent and their time while eroding trust and job satisfaction.

The most critical skill for your organization is decision making. What are you doing to ensure you do it well?

Communication

If people aren’t skilled and comfortable at giving feedback and pushing back respectfully, they are harboring frustrations, tiptoeing around certain individuals, and keeping their mouths shut when you most need them to speak up. Are your people saying what needs to be said? Are you?

Planning and Monitoring Progress

I encounter way too many people who believe monitoring progress is about checking off tasks against the plan. As Dwight Eisenhower said, “In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” If you focus on checking off your progress and forget that the plan isn’t the goal, you’re going to fail. Plans are never perfect. Events never go exactly as expected. Changes are inevitable. The unexpected never fails to show its face. Your planning and monitoring need a paradigm shift.

Accountability

I don’t even like to type that word and leave it there all alone. If the people you are holding accountable don’t think of you as their accountability partner, you’re probably generating more tension and resentment, than progress. Teams win and lose together. Are you on the same team or not?

All five of these areas can benefit tremendously from a little clarity – clarity of purpose, process, and roles.

Think you could use some improvement in these five areas at your company? Let’s talk. 603-784-5727.