Number 145 – Maintain Alignment During Change

Maintain alignment during change.

Practitioners: tactical, integrative, and strategic

One of the most common assumptions in organizational change is that communication creates alignment. Over time, I have learned these are not the same thing. Alignment during change is a separate piece of work.

A team may attend the meetings. The emails may be distributed. The training may be completed. Everyone may understand what is changing and when it will occur. Yet weeks later, confusion emerges. Expectations become unclear. Commitments are interpreted differently. Performance drifts. Leaders begin to wonder why a well-communicated change is struggling to gain traction.

The problem is often not communication. The problem is alignment.

Change Travels Through Commitments

Every process exists between suppliers and customers. Suppliers provide inputs. Customers receive outputs. The process itself is a series of commitments and expectations connecting the two. When change occurs, those commitments and expectations often change as well. This is why change reaches much farther than most organizations initially realize.

A supplier may be asked to deliver something differently. A customer may develop new expectations. Process owners may inherit different accountabilities. Leaders may establish new performance requirements. While each group experiences the change differently, all remain connected to the same system.

The challenge is not simply informing everyone that a change is coming. The challenge is verifying that everyone understands how the change affects them and how their commitments support the larger purpose of the organization.

Over the years, I have found that asking questions is often more valuable than delivering answers.

Who supplies the process?

Who receives the output?

What commitments are changing?

What expectations must be clarified?

Who else will be affected by the decisions being made today?

These conversations reveal assumptions that might otherwise remain hidden until the change is underway.

Alignment During Change Needs a Reference Point

Purpose, mission, vision, goals, and objectives provide an important reference point throughout this process. They give people a common point of orientation when individual perspectives begin to diverge. Suppliers, customers, leaders, and team members may not experience the change in the same way, but they should all understand why the change is necessary and how it contributes to the organization’s direction.

Alignment does not mean everyone agrees with every decision. Alignment means people understand the purpose, their role, and the commitments required to move forward together.

Change efforts rarely fail because people are incapable of adapting. More often, they struggle because alignment was assumed rather than verified.

Successful change requires more than communication. It requires a deliberate effort to ensure that the people connected by the process remain connected by purpose.

Questions For Your Consideration

Have we communicated the change, or have we verified alignment?

Which suppliers, customers, and stakeholders will experience the greatest impact from the change?

What commitments and expectations are changing as a result of the initiative?

How clearly can those affected connect the change to the organization’s purpose, mission, vision, goals, and objectives?

More OpEx 4 OpEx