Achieve Business Strategy Alignment

Posted on: September 5th, 2023

Creating and measuring growth is key to business success.  But growth requires strategy, and you must achieve business strategy alignment to ensure your strategy is understood and communicated inside your company.

MLA provides strategic planning and execution, ensuring business strategy alignment.  We provide Finance, Strategy, and Solutions through our fractional CFOs and Strategic Advisors.  These services are available through our offices in Southwest Ohio and our team throughout the country.

Three Steps to Business Strategy Alignment

Step 1—Alignment and Strategy Creation.

Some companies rely solely upon their internal mission when establishing a strategy.  They can have the misguided view of “We are who we are, deal with it.”  Other companies may try to accommodate every potential customer. Both approaches are detrimental.

At this point, two questions become extremely important:

• What will your customers buy?
• What are you producing?

Answering these will make sure you are developing your strategy with both your customers and employees in mind.

Step 2—Alignment and Strategy Communication.

Strategy alignment success rates drop by around 50 percentage points in this phase for a multitude of reasons.  For example:

• The message from the top of the org chart can be distorted as it cascades down through the organization.
• Employees may not receive recognition for their implementation of the goals, and they may not understand how their job description relates to the overall strategy.

Step 3—Alignment and Strategy Execution.

Step 3 is hard because the magnitude of change and innovation required to bridge the knowing/doing gap is enormous.  To increase your chances of success, you will need to help your workforce support the following alignment behaviors:

• Make tough choices and difficult trade-offs in exchange for new behaviors.
• Innovate in ways that are responsive to the market you seek to serve.
• Reduce operating costs while increasing sales.
• Recognize and reward those who adopt new behaviors and decision-making approaches.
• Differentiate your company’s offerings from that of the competition.

At MLA, we are experienced in helping you achieve business strategy alignment across your organization.  Contact us to learn more.