A central feature of modern
organizations is interdependence, where no one has complete autonomy, where
most employees are tied to many others by their work, technology, management systems,
and hierarchy. These linkages present a special challenge when organizations
attempt to change. Unless many individuals line up and move together in the
same direction, people will tend to fall all over one another. To executives
who are overeducated in management and undereducated in leadership, the idea of
getting people moving in the same direction appears to be an organizational problem.
What executives need to do, however, is not organize people but align them. Managers
“organize” to create human systems that can implement plans as precisely and
efficiently as possible. Typically, this requires a number of potentially
complex decisions. A company must choose a structure of jobs and reporting
relationships, staff it with individuals suited to the jobs, provide training
for those who need it, communicate plans to the work force, and decide how much
authority to delegate and to whom. Economic incentives also need to be
constructed to accomplish the plan, as well as systems to monitor its
implementation. These organizational judgments are much like architectural decisions.
It’s a question of fit within a particular context. Aligning is different. It
is more of a communications challenge than a design problem. First, aligning
invariably involves talking to many more individuals than organizing does. The target
population can involve not only a manager’s subordinates but also bosses,
peers, staff in other parts of the organization, as well as suppliers,
governmental officials, or even customers. Anyone who can help implement the
vision and strategies or who can block implementation is relevant. Trying to
get people to comprehend a vision of an alternative future is also a communications
challenge of a completely different magnitude from organizing them to fulfill a
short term plan. It’s much like the difference between a football quarterback attempting
to describe to his team the next two or three plays versus his trying to explain
to them a totally new approach to the game to be used in the second half of the
season. Whether delivered with many words or a few carefully chosen symbols,
such messages are not necessarily accepted just because they are understood.
Another big challenge in leadership efforts is credibility getting people to
believe the message.
Many things contribute to credibility:
the track record of the person delivering the message, the content of the
message itself, the communicator’s reputation for integrity and
trustworthiness, and the consistency between words and deeds. Finally, aligning
leads to empowerment in a way that organizing rarely does. One of the reasons
some organizations have difficulty adjusting to rapid changes in markets or
technology is that so many people in those companies feel relatively powerless.
They have learned from experience that even if they correctly perceive
important external changes and then initiate appropriate actions, they are vulnerable
to someone higher up who does not like what they have done. Reprimands can take
many different forms: “That’s against policy” or “We can’t afford it” or “Shut
up and do as you’re told.”
Alignment helps overcome
this problem by empowering people in at least two ways. First, when a clear
sense of direction has been communicated throughout an organization, lower level
employees can initiate actions without the same degree of vulnerability. As
long as their behavior is consistent with the vision, superiors will have more
difficulty reprimanding them. Second, because everyone is
aiming at the same target, the probability is less than one person’s initiative
will be stalled when it comes into conflict with someone else.
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