When a leader assumes a new position, research shows there is at least a 40% risk of disappointing performance, a voluntary transfer, or of termination within 18 months. Three challenges repeatedly cited as contributing causes include:   

• managing performance; 

• establishing accountability; 

• leading teams. 

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Greentree Consulting Ltd.’s Strategic Alignment Workshop directly addresses these challenges by clarifying a team’s priorities, goals, and the actions necessary to attain them.  In addition, practical performance metrics are agreed upon as well as a means for measuring and monitoring progress.  All of these foundational elements are established through a process involving extensive team participation, creating strong support throughout the team.  The process helps to align newly-established teams as well as to strengthen mature teams’ operation and collaboration. 

 

Specifically, the Strategic Alignment Workshop helps teams strengthen efficiency and achievement by: 

• identifying and discussing the assumptions underlying the team’s approach to achieving its goals; 

• identifying team goals and the actions to be taken to achieve each one; 

• creating a manageable set of measures to track progress and to sound an early alarm if things get off-track; 

• establishing a practical process for reviewing measures and taking corrective action early when needed. 

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It may be helpful to think of team alignment as a high-octane fuel that accelerates collaboration and results.  Research bears this out as teams possessing clear, measurable goals - in comparison to teams without such goals report: 

• more than twice the level of cooperation and teamwork; 

• three-times more frequently that the team self-monitors performance; 

• eight times more frequently that the team’s strategy is well-communicated; 

• twice as often that the team’s last major change effort was successful. 

 

Becoming a powerful measurement-managed team is not easy. One study found that 79% of managers reported measures of operating efficiency to be critically important.  However, fewer than 45% of those managers trusted the quality of the operating measures they had.   
 

As effective measurement underlies effective management, why are helpful measures of important goals so hard to come by? Some common reasons are: 

• goals and tactics are frequently not defined in measurable terms; 

• teams often try to measure too many things, or the wrong things; 

• teams create measures that are too time consuming and expensive to collect. 

 

End result - teams often fail to possess the navigational instruments they need to ensure that their desired destination is reached. 

 

The Strategic Alignment Workshop consists of two components: 

1. Prior to attending, team members complete an assessment.  In that assessment, each team member identifies what he/she believes to be the most important team goals as well as operational improvements the team should make to achieve those goals. 

2. A day-long workshop designed to accomplish the following objectives: 

a.    Review existing team mandates as well as any barriers to accomplishing these mandates. 
b.   Review and discuss the results of the pre-workshop survey.  Agree on; 

• core assumptions upon which the team’s goals and priorities are based; 

• top-priority team goals; 

• operational improvements that need to be made to reach these goals; 

• a draft set of practical measures to track progress; 

• an efficient process for recording and updating measures as well as for reviewing and acting on measurement results. 

 

During the subsequent three months, participating teams will receive three hours of phone-based coaching to help them finalize their measures, review progress, and address any implementation issues that may arise.   

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