I’m an alumni of Boston University Graduate School of Business, so I receive the Alumni magazine Bostonia. To be honest, that doesn’t mean I read it faithfully at all. But this issue was different. George Labovitz, a professor in organizational behavior at the school wrote an article recently on his research into the application of alignment to achieve extraordinary results in organizations.
He caught me with the first sentence: “More than thirty years of research has shown that aligned and integrated organizations outperform their nearest competitors in every major financial measure.”
He admitted not many organizations do it, but those that utilize it well also realize a significant competitive advantage!
By definition: alignment is the optimal state in which strategy, people, customers, and key processes work in concert to propel growth and profits. When business leaders implement this kind of alignment, the whole organization enjoys greater customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, greater returns for investors. To do this, they de-emphasize hierarchy and distribute authority, information, knowledge, and customer data. As a...