The ultimate goal of any organisation is to be strategy-aligned: an organisation in which the activities of departments, units, teams, and individuals are aligned with the overall strategy and goals of the organisation. This level of alignment will significantly increase the likelihood that the organisation actually achieves its desired results (Luo & Park 2001).
Strategy-alignment is about ensuring that we not only measure what matters, but that everyone is working towards the same purpose. In a strategy-aligned organisation, every employee will see a connection between even the most mundane tasks that they undertake each day and the overall strategic intent of the organisation. People will not just be busy for the sake of being busy but will be focused on doing things that actually matter to the organisation’s ultimate goals.
Strategy alignment can only happen when there is a direct line of sight between what people do each day, and the most important results that the organisation seeks to achieve. The idea is simple – when you look at the goals that individuals, teams, units, and departments are pursuing, these goals must be to a large extent related to the organisational goals.
There are a number of evidence-based principles and practices that we have found improve the process of strategy alignment and cascades, and we will share some of them here to guide organisational leaders and HRM practitioners to improve their goal setting process.
Carry Your People Along: The more that your people are involved in the strategy development process, the more effective the cascade process and results will be (Nasomboon 2014). Organizations can achieve this by, for example, getting feedback from employees through a strategy pulse-check at the very early stages of the organisational strategy development process. By getting employees to evaluate the organisation’s performance and make contributions to the strategy, employees get a chance to actually contribute meaningfully, have their voices heard and can see a greater connection between their realities and the aspirations of the organisation.
Also, at the point of performance contracting, use the “performance contracting clinics” methodology where managers sit with their team members to review the organisational/departmental strategy and work together to cascade them to individual goals (Barrow 2010).
Go Beyond “Business-As-Usual”: Your current job description represents “Business-As-Usual” and is therefore not strategic. When coming up with strategic goals at all levels, look beyond your job description – do not “drag and drop items from your job description into your score card. Strategy is meant to push the productivity frontier and add new and exciting things to your job description. So, do not look at your job description when coming up with strategic goals – look at what is strategic – new and different ways of doing things and adding value.
Ensure Goals are S.M.A.R.T: When you come up with goals, make sure they are Spaecific, Measurable, Alinged, Relevant and Time-Bound. Test your goal statements for each of these five qualities and refine/reject goals that do not meet the criteria.
Look for Implied and Derived Goals: At each level of the cascade, there are two types of goals that emerge – an Implied Goal that means that just by its nature it is a goal that relates directly to you; and then a Derived Goal – a goal that you support or that you can build other goals from. For example, if there is a goal to build a new app, this will clearly be an Implied goal for the Information Technology (IT) Department. However, the HR Department may see an opportunity for a Derived goal to “hire a new app developer” or “implement training on app development.”
Develop Initiatives to support goals: It is very important to go beyond the goals to ask the question – “how will you achieve the goals?” Answering this question will lead you to come up with a number of initiatives that themselves will become sub-goals. If everyone along the cascade process thinks in terms of ‘how,” then there will be sufficient sub-goals and results at each level that can be linked to the strategic goals. The initiatives, sub-initiatives and their own goals now become the responsibility of employees lower down the cascade process. For non-customer facing roles, this process of breaking goals into initiatives is a veritable way to create goals at all levels in the organisation that are strategy-aligned.
Pass the “Tracking” Test: When setting goals, you should ensure that in addition to being S.M.A.R.T, the goals also are being tracked. Is there someone tracking the goal and is the tracking of the goal captured in that person’s goals also? Remember, what doesn’t get measured, doesn’t get done and it is very important to ‘inspect what you expect”
Track Inter-dependencies: To ensure that there is an internal alignment between and within teams and departments, organisations should pay attention to tracking interdependencies across departments, units, and teams. Look out for goals and initiatives where more than one person, team, unit or department is involved, and let the stakeholders involved know each other and the role that they are to play to support each other to achieve the goals. Inter-dependency tables are a very useful output from an effective cascade process. They will also help reduce the possibility that some goals will not be captured.
Overall, to achieve the important objective of having a strategy-aligned organisation, we should focus on ensuring that goal setting in our organisations reflect some of this evidence-based principles and practices of carrying employees along, ensuring S.M.A.R.T. goals, tracking interdependencies and going beyond business-as-usual. Doing these amongst others will enhance your ability to achieve your organisation’s results.
