Why is Goal Alignment so important?
Goal Alignment is all about ensuring that the Strategic Priorities and annual business plan is appropriatey communicated and interpreted across the business. The process that Pygmalion can facilitate is one where each functional leadership team meets to dialogue the implications of the plan, identifying what would be key functional objectives in support of the business’s ambition, and translating these into individual performance contracts with these senior managers.
Typically, the process is rolled out over a 2-3 month period, starting with the customer/consumer facing departments (Marketing, Sales), and then following up with the internal (often shared service) departments such as Finance, Supply Chain, Human Resources, and Information Technology.
What we see is the challenge the line managers are often faced with making sense of the business plan, and translating the ambition into relevant and meanigful functional and individual objectives that would result in motivating performance contracts. The exercise not only results in better performance contracts, but also leads to improved communication (everyone hears the same story) and even more important, a significant learning curve across the business… Suddenly, we are all on the same page with what ‘meets expectations’ means, as a Key performance indicator (KPI) and also as a standard of the work that is required to drive value…
Typically, Pygmalion tailors the goal alignment process to suit our client’s timelines, level of complexity of the goal definition that is required (i.e. is this an extraordinary year?), and in the level of maturity of the client organisation’s performance management culture and system that is in place. We also see how internal partners benefit from our mentorship and playing a co-facilitation role in the process…
