7 Best Practices for Aligning Your People

A team is only as good as the members that make it up. For a company to have a team that works like a finely oiled machine, they need to align their business goals with their available talent.

This alignment goes deeper than just putting people into the positions they're best suited for. Alignment strategy looks at the business's mission and vision and puts people in places that best direct the company to maintain both of them.

To help, we have identified 7 best practices to help align your talent to your business goals and create clarity and focus throughout your organization:

So what can organizations do to build coaching services internally? Here are five specific examples.

1. Have Clarity On Goals And KPIs

Clear business goals may be a good starting point. It sounds too simple, but trust me, this is not always the case. Having clarity on key focus areas and key performance indicators (KPIs) for the short- and medium-term will enable better and swifter people decisions. Misalignment is the root of all evil!

2. Be Intentional About Alignment

There is a talent/people strategy behind every business goal, whether you realize it or not. If you want these to be well aligned, you need to be intentional. Understand the business goal well, communicate it clearly to employees, gain their buy-in, ask them for feedback and use that feedback to develop your talent strategy.

3. Establish A Clear Cadence

Establishing a rhythm of corporate planning and communications is a way to clearly set expectations, ensuring employees know what to do to be successful. Strong business planning creates predictability and continuity for employees, ensuring organizational priorities are clearly understood, providing a means for leaders to guarantee employees know how their contribution supports business outcomes.

4. Understand Staff Strengths And Weaknesses

It seems simple, but managers truly understanding what their employees are good at and areas they are not as strong in is key. Then the manager can work with others to thoughtfully assign employees to projects and goals that align with their strengths. Knowing their team also ensures managers identify skill sets they need to build in their employees or hire for in the future.

5. Have The Right Person For The Right Job

Right person for the right job! You could only achieve that if business goals are well defined and the competency required to perform them have been identified. Once you find your talent based on those competencies, communicate and clarify the business goals. This leaves no chance of any confusion on the expected results and helps to align the talent to the business goals.

6. Help People Connect The Dots

You need to help people connect the dots. When someone comes into a company, they may not know right away how they fit into the long-term plan, particularly if they are at a junior level. I think tying someone's personal success to the company's success (how what someone is really good at is going to help) can be a powerful creator of intrinsic motivation, which is infinitely powerful.

7. Create Internal Coaching Programs through the Alignment Performance System™

Create internal coaching and mentoring programs that are aligned to different roles and levels. Most companies target the top 10 to 15% via several leadership programs to align talent and business goals. This is very inefficient over the long term. Coaching programs that involve the entire organization are much more effective as it connects people at all levels and creates strong trust.

Want to see the power of alignment and how it can help grow your business while engaging your people? We can help. We guarantee a 2X ROI after our program. Contact us today at (801) 993-1992 or click below to get started!