If you have ever hit a pothole on the street or bumped into a curb at a higher rate of speed, you might have noticed your vehicle beginning to pull to the right or left. At first, you notice the difference and are a bit upset that the pothole or curb caused this issue. As time passes, you may become accustomed to the vehicle’s tendency to veer off in a direction other than straight. You tell yourself that you will get around to fixing it, but more time goes by, and it just slips into the ‘yet-to-be-done’ column of your to-do list. The vehicle is still drivable, so you go along with business as usual.
The reality is that misalignment on your vehicle can cause additional damage or incur extra expenses. For instance, with the vehicle out of alignment, the wear and tear on your tires occurs in an uneven pattern, using up the tread at a rate sooner than it should. This resulted in additional expenses, which were unnecessary. The alignment also places additional stress on the suspension components, causing them to wear out more quickly.
Your misaligned business or organization is like driving a car when it is out of alignment. It all seems to start very small. These challenges or problems cause the people or systems to move in a different direction, and the organization then adapts to continue on its way, albeit out of alignment. Over time, these alignment issues begin to manifest in various additional costs. Customer experiences or poor ratings are becoming more frequent. Quality issues start presenting themselves. The organization begins to drift increasingly off-center.
Much like taking your vehicle to a certified mechanical shop to get it realigned, you need to check your organization for optimal alignment with its Core Purpose, Core Values, Core Principles, and other key metrics to ensure it is driving in the best possible direction. It is easy to simply ignore the alignment issue, as people will naturally realign to the most common or simplest way to accomplish things. The challenge is that as the alignment erodes, your culture is also drifting sideways. It is one thing to get your vehicle back in alignment. It is a totally different thing to have it totaled because the vehicle was involved in a crash and cannot be repaired.
It may sound extreme to think that some alignment issues could cause your organization to get so far off track that it fails. It happens more frequently than you might believe. No, it does not happen overnight, but the erosion once started is more timely, costly, and distracting than it should ever have been if the organization had been kept aligned.
This week, as you ponder your next steps in building an aligned organization to position it for the greatest future outcomes, take a critical look at whether the business has fallen out of alignment with your core guidance systems and metrics. What needs to be focused on to realign the organization for the future?
Looking for a culture alignment organization to bring your business back into tip-top shape for the future? Call a Promise Guide at JKL Associates – MI (313) 527-7945 or FL (407) 984-7246
Journey On!
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