As children, nothing was more thrilling than waking up on a Saturday morning to watch an array of rainbow-colored Power Rangers team up, pilot assault machines and overcome periodic antagonists. Each Power Ranger had their own specialized skills and weaponry, but the team was always strongest when they came together and combined their devices into one massive ‘megazord’ fighting machine. Together, they conquered any nemesis, including the dreadful Rita Repulsa.
Like the Power Rangers (though obviously less colorful), executive business leaders are most productive when aligned and working together. Leadership alignment is the process of gathering company executives to create a unified understanding of what an organization needs to succeed; senior executives align on a strategic approach and then pursue goals together as one united ‘megazord’ organization. The Power Rangers always prevailed when aligning their skills into one giant machine; likewise, individual departments and teams are more likely to succeed when leadership is aligned.
Leadership Alignment and Organizational Change
Leadership alignment fosters a shared vision and implements that vision into everything the organization does–at all levels. As a result, the alignment process is also conducive to successfully scaling organizational change. Leadership alignment can significantly help manage organizational change by creating a shared vision and aligning employees around that same goal. Leaders who can align at the beginning of a business transformation will find themselves supported by an engaged workforce, ready and willing to face change. Consequently, organizations that use leadership alignment as the foundation of their change journey have a better chance at success. Here are the three steps to improve and solidify your organization’s leadership alignment when preparing for company-wide change.
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Understand the Need for Change
Understanding the need for change is as important as making the change itself. Executive leaders must review their customer’s needs, company mission and values to identify the problem cohesively. By developing a clear understanding of a company’s most pressing challenges, leaders can accomplish more than they could by abruptly responding to crises. Furthermore, a clear understanding of a company’s mission can motivate employees to achieve goals more quickly and confidently.
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Enlist Support
After aligning on why the company must change, executives must enlist the support of a core team of stakeholders to work on a solution and scale it throughout the organization. Crafting the right communication strategy to engage core team members helps establish the tone for the entire initiative. The core team can be composed of department heads or senior-level management figures that are able to identify potential change catalysts. This core team will be an intricate part of the entire transformation process, shaping a vision, changing systems and implementing new frameworks.
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Envisage Implications
Once the company’s key challenges are understood, and a core team is enlisted to enact a plan, leaders must envisage the opportunities and implications of the new solution on the organization. One way to envisage how a solution would take hold is by testing the plan on a small sample group. After attaining general feedback and collecting data, leaders should have a more realistic indication of how their solution will work and how the organization will develop.
Conquer Change Management From The Start
Leadership alignment is an essential aspect of any company's success. When alignment is present, there is a sense that all company members are part of a giant ‘megazord’ organization, fighting for the same goal. While scaling change can be just as scary as beating Rita Repulsa, remember that the key to conquering change is establishing strongly aligned leadership from the start. Now, it’s morphin’ time!
To discover how you can better facilitate executive alignment within your organization, check out ExperiencePoint’s array of change management products. ExperienceChange™ provides a simple, easy-to-use framework for everyone involved in managing change. Backed by over 20 years of research, industry insights and results, our workshops combine proven approaches with hands-on practice in an engaging, low-risk, high-impact experience.
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