Your company has goals, your group has goals, and you and your employees have goals. Thus, everyone is aligned and working together, right?

If only it were that simple!

Let me tell you about Jim. Jim became a direct report when I joined an aerospace company years ago. He made people cry with his impatience. He couldn’t understand why others couldn’t just do things right. He’d rather do things himself than have to ask or explain twice. He believed he was pretty much surrounded by idiots. I had my work cut out for me!

Six months later, when it was time for Jim’s annual review, I started off by telling him that I was thrilled with how much he had learned and changed.

• He no longer made people cry
• He realized that when others made mistakes, it wasn’t always their fault, that sometimes the instructions were confusing or wrong, and other times contradictory instructions from multiple sources were the source of the problem
• He realized that if he helped people learn what needed to be done and why, they became more effective and easier to work with
• He realized that he could actually learn from others if he tried to understand what they were thinking
• He had started taking preventive action instead of waiting for, and almost relishing, the typical disasters that proved the incompetence of those around him
• He was receiving honest, heart-felt thanks from people who wanted him fired six months earlier

But Jim’s eyes filled with tears and he said, “I’ve learned nothing!”

He then listed all the things he had hoped to learn and accomplish over the previous year. Every item on his list represented a technical accomplishment. The CAD system he’d hoped to learn. The new equipment he’d hope to incorporate into standard procedures. Despite all of our conversations, all of my emphasis on how he worked with others, all of my explanations of the impact of his behavior, he still measured his success exclusively in terms of technical accomplishments. Issues involving the people around him remained distractions, even as he fundamentally changed those relationships. From his perspective, based on his measures of success, the year was a total failure.

Our review conversation was as eye-opening as any conversation I have ever had. I hope Jim finally realized how much more valuable he had become to the organization. What I realized is that company goals and personal measures of success are often far apart. Jim’s goals never changed during this period. How Jim approached his work, however, was as different as night and day. I saw success. He saw failure. Alignment requires more than cascading goals down to each individual. Alignment also requires that all understand how they can contribute to the success of the organization and how that aligns with their own natural inclinations and desires.