Targeting Your Core Objectives

The alignment model should help you pinpoint the key issues that will affect the cultural balance of the organization. Use it to measure whether the objectives you've chosen will affect the strategic and cultural sides of the business equally.

If you can't figure out which of the objectives you've identified are the ones to focus on for a balanced strategy, look at your five-year plan. Ask business-unit managers what the top three to five strategic imperatives are for their units and match their needs to your list of issues. Compare the issues you find in your research of the current cultural environment with the present and future business objectives of the company. Make further connections between those issues and the values of the organization. Look for the alignments and gaps that help or hinder the organization's ability to achieve its goals.

An example of companies that have problems with their organizational versus cultural alignment are high-tech companies that lured high- powered talent with stock options. They were able to keep profits up by offering lower-than-competitive salaries while providing generous stock options. When stock values declined, most employees were "under water" with their options. Stock options were no longer a viable way to attract talented employees . The resulting chaos had a dramatic affect on these firms as the new reality set in.

If you've done your research correctly and identified the right objectives, you'll see that employees throughout the organization have the same concerns regardless of their station. If that's not the case, if you find that your objectives target only unique needs of specific groups, then you are focused too low in the system. An enterprise-level approach will afford you a commanding view across the company. Later in the process you can drill back down through the plan to customize your solutions to individual groups, but for now you must consider the big picture.

The list of core objectives you come up with will be your starting point for developing your enterprise strategy. This list will become the road map that guides you through your transformation process, and if you find yourself lost during this massive change initiative, your core objectives will lead you back to the right path . As long as everything you do is linked to achieving your core objectives, the project will succeed. Without these core objectives, you'd be blind to the ultimate needs of your people.