Alignment Assessment
Data Collection
One of the most difficult tasks facing a CEO in any organization is ensuring that the respective plans of each department are aligned. In a small company, the CEO is “in the moment” driving specific deals and relationships with little time to evaluate the ultimate coordination of resources. Typically, the executives set their goals, built plans to measure and meet them, and are reasonably successful in their accomplishments.
Nonetheless, a lot of work is done in many companies without a lot of results. For example, marketing is generating “leads”, but the sales pipeline isn’t full. Engineering is writing a lot of code, but products aren’t being released. Sales is selling deals to “costly” customers. Services are implementing the products, but they are not being adopted.
Team provides any documentation on their respective goals, objectives and measurements.
Schedule two hour interviews with each departmental executive:
- Products
- Engineering
- Finance
- Sales
- Business Development (if separate)
- Marketing
- Support/Services
- General Administration
Evaluation
Review
Information is reviewed and inconsistencies or mis-alignment is identified.
For example, marketing is working to generate 1000 leads each quarter, but the company only has sales capacity to process 200.
The sales organization is selling a value that the services team is not prepared to deliver.
The product is designed for a mid-tier company but the sales marketing is targeting startups with the pricing.
A formal document is delivered and reviewed with either the CEO or the executive team that participated.