The real reason all your talent is wasted
Imagine attending a concert where each musician plays flawlessly, but they’re all playing different pieces. A violinist is lost in Vivaldi, a cellist is deep into Bach, while the pianist is passionately pounding out Beethoven. Individually, they’re excellent. Collectively, they are giving you a migraine. Even if each player excels in their domain, without alignment, the efforts do not produce an enjoyable experience for anyone.
In reality, this often happens in our organizations. Anywhere from early-stage startups to large enterprises, individuals, teams, and departments have different perspectives. These differences result from capabilities and responsibilities which add to the organizational potential for greatness, but without a unifying force, these differences create friction and barriers.
Understanding Misalignment
Misalignments in organizations range from true conflicts to simple misunderstandings. Misalignments may be rooted in technology, skill, strategy, culture, cadence, or governance just to name a few. Over time, unaddressed misunderstandings may become institutionalized friction.
Many misalignments morph into ongoing blame games between individuals or teams where each side fails to see how the other adds value. “Players” want to play their best and do everything in their power to excel but organizations often struggle to keep everyone playing to the same tune.
Let’s consider misalignments from two related primary causes: information and incentives.
“They don’t know any better”
Regardless of how well knowledge is managed, all information can never be available to everyone at all times. Getting information to the right people at the right time is hard. Making that information relevant and insightful might be harder. Information can be deliberately withheld, buried in inaccessible places, or lost in translation.
Many suboptimal processes get pinned in place because the right people have not had the information to overcome the inertia and no single party can change the process unilaterally. The flow of value inevitably suffers when decisions and actions get disconnected from outcomes. Everyone believes they are doing a good job and has their metrics to prove that.
“They have a selfish interest”
Conflicting incentives are also inevitable. Dev and Ops represent the struggle between moving fast to change (and breaking things) versus holding stable standards and making sure that everything works. Good sales teams will push for quick wins to meet quota, while good product teams will strive to focus on long-term capabilities. Even security and compliance often end up with misaligned incentives.
Preaching “doing the right thing” does not change the game. People will play to maximize their incentives. This is true from the boardroom to the factory floor.
To quote the great Edwards Deming,
“People with targets and jobs dependent upon meeting them will probably meet the targets - even if they have to destroy the enterprise to do it.”
Compounding Effects
Small misalignments become big problems when they are allowed to persist, especially when they contribute to a culture of learned helplessness. Often everyone wants things to improve but feels powerless to make a change.
Employees accept that they can’t work with certain people or departments and instead work around each other to ‘get things done’. Executives believe their strategy and focus on ‘why’ but practitioners struggle to connect work to the big picture with a ‘what and how’ that makes sense. Time, money, and effort spent on initiatives that fail to capitalize on obvious market trends cause the best people to disengage. The wasted resources, missed opportunities, and eroded trust set the bar lower for the next downward spiral.
What can you do?
Imagine what your organization could accomplish if every department, team, and individual played in harmony, aligned to a shared vision, and with the information and incentives to succeed. Alignment is not just about eliminating a bit of friction, but unlocking the full organizational potential. Too many settle for inefficiency and mediocrity, resigned to accept that this is ‘how things are done here’. What can be done to build collaboration, clarity, and purpose toward meaningful outcomes?
The Ergonautic STEER framework uncovers misalignments and provides practical methods to address them. Find and address the source of discord to align teams and become an organizational symphony.