In an organisational setting, strategic alignment is (roughly) about all business units working towards the same vision.
To achieve alignment, executives expect their middle managers to operationalise the strategic plan within their respective teams. This requires consideration of strategic goals during business and project planning, related roll out and performance monitoring.
Sounds like a reasonable request, although it does take a bit of effort to achieve.
As a middle manager, you are:
juggling the strategic with the operational
making room for new initiatives, while also maintaining the things that are already working
simultaneously helping your clients, meeting your boss’s expectations and looking after your team.
And all this needs to happen within the scope of the organisation’s strategic agenda.
So, how can you make it easier to meet these expectations?
First, practice selflessness.
Consider the bigger picture in your annual planning and daily decision-making, so that your work supports the strategic goals.
Make this more tangible for yourself and your team by continuously considering your clients (the end users) and their needs (the end outcome), so that you allocate resources to the work that is most helpful. After all, meeting client needs is why your organisation and your team exist.
To that end, create opportunities for your team to build relationships with clients and learn more about their needs.
Then, be a bit selfish.
Use strategic alignment to weed out the work that doesn’t clearly benefit your clients.
Review your existing activities against the strategic goals and see which commitments can be decluttered, to reduce your to-do list...I mean, to achieve alignment. Use the goals to also assess future requests…I mean, future opportunities.
I know that this is easier said than done.
Sometimes we commit to things that don’t perfectly align with the vision because of our or someone else’s personal preferences. It may be a project we found interesting, didn’t have the confidence to say ‘no’ to or didn’t take the time to adequately assess.
But it’s a skill worth pursuing.
Continuing to build your confidence around strategic alignment is not only a way to help clients and hit targets, but also a good way to bring more meaning to your work.
I hope this is helpful.