FrontPace | The book | Per Christensen
Most leadership teams believe they share the same priorities. Few have ever checked. The result is slow decisions, weak action plans and a strategy that exists on paper but not in practice. Strategy Alignment shows how to close that gap, combining Organisational Ecology, a practical theory of organisational change developed over more than three decades, with Strategy Alignment Analysis™ (SAA).
Strategy Alignment
Strategy Alignment Analysis™ (SAA) is a strategic alignment assessment that gives a leadership or project team a precise, data-driven measure of alignment within defined strategic focus areas
Ask the members of a leadership team to rank the organisation's goals, and the pattern is strikingly consistent. The finance director puts the financial goal first, the sales director the market, the production director quality and delivery. Each ranks from their own position, and each assumes the others see it the same way.
This book is about that gap, and about what a leadership team can do to close it. It brings together two strands of work. The first is Organisational Ecology, a practical theory of organisational change that Per Christensen and Jon Lund Hansen began to develop in 1988. The second is Strategy Alignment Analysis™ (SAA), a structured method that measures how aligned a leadership or project team is on its strategic focus areas, and helps the team turn that alignment into cohesion and, with the optional module SAA+, into execution.
“Without the theory, the method risks becoming a measurement exercise. Without the method, the theory risks remaining a set of interesting ideas.” From the preface
The theory explains why well-intentioned people so often pull in slightly different directions. The method gives a team a precise, non-judgemental picture of where it stands and a disciplined way of acting on it.
Why an organisation is better understood as an ecosystem than as a machine, and the nine organisational-ecological principles for change that follow from that view.
How mental positions and the surface and deep structure of communication shape what people agree on, and what they only seem to agree on.
Why resistance to change is feedback, not opposition, and what it tells a leader about behaviour and intention.
What the Alignment Index captures and how its results are read and used. The algorithm itself is proprietary and is not described in the book.
From the initial questionnaire and individual input to the written report, the workshop and the debrief, followed by a complete case: nine leaders, five focus areas.
How the focus areas a team has aligned on are built into a connected framework of vision, focus areas, goals and action plans, then implemented and followed through.
Each chapter ends with questions for reflection, and the book closes with notes, a glossary and a bibliography.
The difference between a strategy that exists on paper and a strategy that is shared by the people who are to carry it out.
The theoretical foundation in detail, from the ecosystem as a metaphor for organisations to 1st-, 2nd- and 3rd-order change and leadership.
How alignment is measured, the eight steps of an SAA, the workshop in which alignment is turned into cohesion, and a complete case.
Vision, focus areas, goals and action plans as one connected framework, and how it is implemented and followed through.
Ethics, confidentiality and the limits of measurement, a critique of the theory, and reflections on leading aligned organisations.
“A strategy can exist in two ways. It can exist formally, as a document that has been approved and distributed. And it can exist in reality, as a shared understanding that guides what people actually do. The two are often confused.”
“When we speak of alignment in this book, we mean the extent to which that common direction actually exists in the minds of the people who are to carry the strategy out. When we speak of cohesion, we mean the extent to which it shows in what they do together.”
Leaders and board members who are responsible for a strategy and want it to become more than a document. Consultants, organisational developers and advisers who help leadership teams with strategy and change. Students of strategy, leadership and organisational development, for whom the book may serve as reference literature.
Organisational Ecology treats an organisation as an ecosystem rather than a machine. Its parts depend on one another, every behaviour serves a function, and a quick fix in one place can do damage somewhere else. Over time and across the whole system, the interests of individuals and groups are common interests, so most apparent conflicts are misunderstandings. People rank priorities from their own position, the intention behind a divergent ranking is usually legitimate, and resistance to change is feedback that says: do something else.
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To see how the method is delivered in practice, visit the Strategy Alignment Analysis™ (SAA) page.