Alignment is a leadership process that revolves around communication and motivation. It occurs once people have been organised into their various roles and tasks assigned.
In this column I continue my train of thought from Strategic Direction Versus Initiative Planning. In that article I explored the notion that planning is a deductive process used by managers to achieve orderly outcomes while strategy tends to be inductive in nature and revolves around looking for relationships and patterns. My conclusion was that planning and strategy have the same relationship as management and leadership. One is not a substitute for the other and each is most effective when complementing the other. Competent planning is a vital reality check on exuberant strategy, and sound strategy gives planning the direction to bring about change.
This week I continue to look at the toolbox of a leader-manager, focussing on the people aspects. Specifically, the difference between aligning people with a strategy and organising people to carry out a plan.
Aligning Versus Organising
In my column Five Stages of Autonomy, I outlined the importance of Management by Objective and Self-Control (MBO) when organising a team. Yet an organisational reality is that no individual has complete autonomy. Whether it is a reporting line, the work of others, fiscal constraint, or technology, there is something on which an individual is dependent to complete a unit of work. Understanding reliances is essential when undertaking change. Unless the interdependencies are motivated by a unified vision, boundary spanning efforts will stall, or everyone will dissipate the available resources in producing a lot of work yet failing to achieve the desired outcomes. Depending on the strengths of the Line Manager, the challenge is usually the result of a failure of alignment or organisation. A failure which most often occurs because of a lack of understanding about the differences between the two concepts.
Organisation
Organisation is a management process that enables the creation of people systems to carry out the plans set by a Line Manager. Organisational or Human Resource Planning is a highly complex task that, among other things, requires:
- Establishment of an appropriate structure for the roles required.
- Determination of the relationship between the roles—direct / indirect reports, number of workers.
- Hiring the right people.
- Undertaking any specialist training.
- Communicating the purpose of the organisational structure to the wider business.
- Deciding the level of authority to delegate.
- Understanding the boundary spanning involved.
- Accounting for the informal leadership needed.
If that were not enough, measuring performance once everyone is in place, and correctly reading the job market to ensure commensurate compensation, is also needed. While in larger organisations a Line Manager will have help with each stage—so it is a good idea to make friends and influence people in HR—there is still a broad range of skills needed from a competent Line Manager to successfully organise a team or department. The reason for this is that while HR, colleagues, and mentors can advise, only the Line Manager can organise and implement. If they do not heed the advice, or poorly execute the advice once taken, organisation will have occurred in name only and the team or department will remain troubled.
