What is team alignment? Why is it important for your team to be aligned on your mission, messaging, and goals?
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At EnticEdge, we are healthcare and wellness business consultants dedicated to helping companies clarify and align around their competitive advantage, which we call your authentic edge! Our team brings 30+ years of healthcare expertise in strategic advising, value mapping, business consulting, client experience, team and cross-departmental alignment, and more, all tailored to helping teams achieve mission-driven growth.
Team alignment is one of the most impactful undertakings any company can partake in on a regular basis. It’s one of the most critical factors for the success of any team, and any company. But what does team alignment really mean? How do you achieve team alignment as a busy organization or company? How do you maintain team alignment?
What is team alignment?
Team alignment is achieved when all members of a given team (or company) have clarity and consistency on audience, mission, values, goals, strategies, key messaging, unique differentiators or value propositions, and brand guidelines.
Team alignment is a continuous endeavor and requires ongoing team training, engagement, and buy-in. It is one of the most essential ways to motivate team members and leverage outstanding expertise and talent on your team. It ensures that all team members, from leadership down to contractors, are driving cohesively toward the same broader company vision, with a deep understanding of how their role contributes to the mission and goals.
Key components of an aligned team:
Mission alignment:
An aligned team is also aligned with the mission of the organization or business unit. An aligned team understands the mission that underpins their work and is actively supporting that overarching mission. Alignment between an organization’s mission and their employees is critical and goes well beyond being able to recite the company mission statement. Does your team understand how and why its contributions support that overarching mission statement? Is that understanding common amongst all team members?
Values:
Shared understanding of values is a must for an aligned team. Not only does it give teams common ground for how they should approach collaboration, innovation, and more, it gives your entire team a benchmark for decision-making. A shared value set allows team members to explain why a decision was made, or not made, citing the values that supported that decision.
For example, let’s pretend you’re a healthcare company who values patient-centered care and innovation. You’re presented with the opportunity to adopt a new patient communication system that will significantly reduce operational costs; however, it lacks advanced features that could improve patient experience. In this case, referring back to your values of patient-centered care and innovation, the proposed system, while cost-effective, is not aligned with your company values. With a team completely aligned on those values, this becomes an easier decision — and your team avoids following the next shiny bright light that presents itself.
Readily accessible goals and strategies:
Where are we going and how are we getting there? An aligned team is working towards the same goals with the same values and with the same mission and strategic roadmap in mind. This provides an almost indescribable level of efficiency by providing your team with an even stronger benchmark for decision-making. Since your team is aligned on goals and values, let’s revisit the scenario above: if increasing patient engagement and retention by X% is a goal, that communication technology becomes even less aligned with organizational aspirations, making it a very clear “no.”
Why is it important to periodically remind the team of organizational goals? Because it’s a driving factor in ensuring your team stays aligned and that you actually achieve those goals. If you’re a startup, or even an agile SME, it’s easy to get distracted by new goals and aspirations before you’ve achieved the ones you set out to accomplish. If you’re an enterprise organization or a business unit within that organization, it can be easy to silo goals and strategies with leadership or overlook goal creation at a sub-team level (where execution in the market is usually happening). It is ineffective to have goals and strategies just sitting in a Google Drive somewhere. An aligned team has goals and strategies readily accessible and refers back to them often to drive in the right direction.
Consistent, audience-specific messaging:
On an aligned team, all members of the team are able to convey a unified message about a company’s key value propositions, differentiators, and competitive advantages, all tailored by audience. If you asked 3 different team members right now what your top 3 differentiators are as a company or team, would they all speak to the same key factors? If we asked them to pitch 3 new clients, would they speak to the same key messages? With the right tone? We’ll get to this later, but this is a huge part of the reason that an aligned team has such strong ROI. An aligned team means an aligned message for your target audience. Don’t feel like you have a clear message? Explore EnticEdge value mapping services to clarify your message today.
Value propositions and unique differentiators:
Similarly to having clarity and consistency on your audience-specific or targeted messaging, an aligned team knows their company (or division’s) value propositions or unique differentiators and can speak to their competitive advantages with confidence and brevity. Again, this is where the ROI of a truly aligned team is indisputable. Speaking to your differentiators and UVPs, your authentic edge, with clarity and alignment leads to growth because your target market has a consistent message about what makes your company or team better for them than competitors.
Brand alignment:
Brand alignment is a congruency between a company's brand identity and the experiences it delivers to its customers and stakeholders. Brand alignment ensures consistency across all touchpoints and aspects of the business or division, from internal culture to external marketing campaigns and customer service interactions. For that reason, team alignment requires brand alignment. Teams of all sizes across all departments should have a clear, consistent, and easily accessible set of brand guidelines for the master brand and all sector brands, which go well beyond logos and color palettes. What is our company tone? Core promise or ethos? Team personality? Visual identity? An aligned team embodies a brand and contributes to its success with daily customer interactions.
Why is team alignment important?
As strategic advisors, we often hear potential clients say: “we’re just not all on the same page,” and “we just haven’t been able to grow as significantly as we’d like to,” Believe it or not, those two questions are directly related. Your team has to be on the same page in order for your company to grow effectively, which makes team alignment an absolutely critical growth strategy.
Team alignment increases customer engagement and revenue growth
First and foremost, team alignment serves your clients. It allows you to help more people and increase revenue so you can help even more people. When all team members are aligned, messaging and interactions with customers are clearer and more consistent. This leads to better customer experience and stronger brand loyalty — both of which directly impact sales and your ability to help more people in your client segment.
“97% of employees and executives believe lack of alignment within a team impacts the outcome of a task or project.” (Source)
Team alignment improves performance, productivity, passion, and retention
When team members are aligned, they are more efficient, effective, and engaged. Every member of an aligned team understands their role and how their daily work contributes to company objectives. Because an aligned team communicates and collaborates effectively from the same set of values, towards the same mission and goals, the team is more productive. How many video conference calls have you been a part of where a team member (with great intention) brings up some new software, new concept, or even new blog post idea completely out of the blue that completely distracts from the goals at hand? How long do you think your team spends resetting and getting on the same page every month, week, or day just so that they can keep moving forward without really knowing what direction they’re moving in?
According to Salesforce, “86% of executives identify ineffective collaboration and communication as a major cause of failure in business.”
In addition to improving productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness, team alignment improves overall team or employee engagement — it gives team members a sense of clarity, camaraderie, and impact that misaligned teams lack. Engaged employees are happier and more successful at their roles, which not only affects quality of work, but improves talent retention and brand loyalty. But let’s put some numbers to it just to be safe:
“the cost of disengaged employees is more than $350 billion and includes 20.6 million workers of the U.S. workforce,” while “companies with high levels of engagement report 22% higher productivity.”
Team misalignment: how to tell if your team is misaligned
Ever feel like your team might be rowing in opposite directions? It's a common challenge, and spotting the signs early can save a lot of time and energy down the road. Misalignment isn't just about missing targets; it's about the subtler cues that show your team might not be on the same page. Here's how you can spot the signs:
Conflicting Priorities: If team members seem to be working toward different goals or priorities seem to clash, it's a red flag that alignment is off.
Inconsistent Messaging: When different team members describe the company's mission, values, or objectives in varied ways, it indicates a lack of shared understanding.
Lack of Engagement: Low morale or a general disinterest in collaboration can be signs that team members do not feel aligned with the team's direction or purpose.
Frequent Misunderstandings: Regular confusion over roles, responsibilities, or the direction of projects suggests that not everyone is on the same track.
Belabored Decision-Making: If making decisions feels like a tug-of-war, with team members pulling in different directions based on divergent understandings of goals and values, alignment may be the issue.
Recognizing these signs is crucial for initiating timely interventions to realign your team. Addressing misalignment promptly ensures that your team can operate cohesively, maintaining productivity and advancing towards shared objectives effectively.
How can I align my team?
The million dollar question (for some of you, quite literally!). How do I align my team? How do we achieve team alignment? Depending on where your team is starting, there are a few different options.
Start with an open and externally moderated dialogue
An open dialogue is the essential starting point for aligning a team, or several teams for that matter. Bringing people together may be the obvious first step, but we’ve all seen firsthand how out of hand and off task a large group can be, especially a passionate group of mission-driven employees. It’s an important first step to bring essential team members together cross-functionally — from the C-suite to the call center — but keeping the conversation productive and driving towards clarity and alignment is difficult to do with internal resources alone. Services like EnticEdge’s value mapping sessions, provide the structure and external perspective necessary to guide these conversations constructively. An external moderator, particularly one with expertise in team dynamics and alignment, can ensure that the dialogue remains focused, balanced, and inclusive of all perspectives.
Next, clarify your mission, values, and goals
Once you've established an open line of communication, the next step is to clarify and reiterate the company's mission, core values, and strategic goals. This isn't just about stating what they are; it's about engaging your team in a discussion about what these mean in their daily work and how they can embody principles that help drive toward those goals. EnticEdge can facilitate workshops or advise to help teams internalize the company's mission and values, ensuring that they are not just words on a website, but living, breathing principles that guide decision-making and behavior.
Create alignment through shared objectives
After establishing a shared understanding of the company's mission and values, the next step is to align the team around common objectives. This means setting clear, measurable goals that reflect the company's strategic direction and ensuring that each team member understands their role in achieving these goals. Regular check-ins and progress updates can help keep the team aligned and accountable.
Foster a culture of continuous feedback and adaptation
Team alignment is not a one-time event but an ongoing process. Regular feedback loops, where team members can share their insights, challenges, and successes, help maintain alignment and adapt to changes. Encouraging a culture where feedback is openly exchanged and valued ensures that the team remains flexible, responsive, and aligned over time.
By taking these steps—facilitating open dialogue with external moderation, clarifying the company's mission, values, and goals, creating shared objectives, and fostering a culture of continuous feedback—you can align your team effectively. This alignment is crucial not just for the team's internal cohesion but also for achieving the broader strategic objectives of your organization.
Team alignment is far more than a strategic exercise; it's a fundamental component that propels a company toward its objectives while fostering a culture of collaboration, innovation, and shared success. Achieving and maintaining team alignment is a dynamic and ongoing endeavor, one that requires commitment, communication, and a clear understanding of shared goals and values.
Successful team alignment ensures that every team member, from the executive suite to frontline employees, is united in purpose and direction. This unity not only enhances individual and team performance but also elevates the overall success of the organization. When teams are aligned, they operate with a sense of clarity and focus that drives efficiency, engagement, and effectiveness, ultimately leading to superior outcomes for both the organization and its customers.
To recap, the essential steps for achieving team alignment include:
Initiating open and structured dialogue with external facilitation to ensure focused and productive discussions.
Clarifying and internalizing the organization's mission, values, differentiators, messaging, and brand to ensure every team member understands and connects with them.
Setting and aligning around shared objectives and strategies that tie individual contributions to the larger organizational vision.
Cultivating a culture of continuous feedback and adaptation, enabling the team to stay aligned and responsive to changes.
Team alignment is a strategic asset — it's a catalyst for growth, innovation, and sustained success. By prioritizing alignment, your organization can harness the collective expertise, passion, and talent of your team, propelling your mission forward and achieving remarkable results. At EnticEdge, we believe in the transformative power of clarity and alignment and have seen firsthand the growth that ensues.
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