{"id":737,"date":"2012-09-07T05:11:57","date_gmt":"2012-09-07T05:11:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/strategiccommitment.com\/?p=737"},"modified":"2012-09-14T05:56:38","modified_gmt":"2012-09-14T05:56:38","slug":"is-total-alignment-and-commitment-too-much-to-expect-from-your-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/strategiccommitment.com\/wp\/is-total-alignment-and-commitment-too-much-to-expect-from-your-team\/","title":{"rendered":"Is total alignment and commitment too much to expect from your team?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Conventional wisdom says that total alignment and commitment is an unrealistic expectation. Everyone knows compliance is as good as it gets. People know what they\u2019re supposed to do. They\u2019re compensated to do it. As long as they don\u2019t screw up or stray too far from what\u2019s expected then everything should be fine.<\/em><\/p>\n

Accepting that as the best your organization can do results in an environment of compliance at best and cynicism, resignation, and apathy at worst. An employee at a large company I\u2019m working with said to me the other day: today was a really good day; nobody asked me to do anything.<\/em> Someone else said by way of introduction at a team meeting: I can\u2019t remember how long I\u2019ve been here but I have 54 months to go.<\/em><\/p>\n

That simply isn\u2019t a sufficient level of commitment to compete these days since there are people all over the world who can do just about anything you can do faster, cheaper and often better, so commitment has got to be robust in order to keep, much less grow, your place at the table.<\/p>\n

When it comes to alignment I\u2019ll often hear people say things like: Well, we can agree to disagree. \u2026or, let\u2019s find middle ground we can both agree to.<\/em><\/p>\n

When that happens, you don\u2019t get alignment, you get consensus, which is\u00a0watered-down compromise no one has any strong feelings against. As soon as initiatives start to go off track or change, people will opt out. And things will<\/em> change, because the world is moving so fast, as soon as a plan is written, there has already been a shift.<\/p>\n

People will say: I told you so\u2026or you should\u2019ve asked me\u2026.or see?\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

So, yes, it\u2019s common to hear and see that compliance is a good as it gets.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to offer an alternative way to think about whether or not you want to accept that for your organization.<\/p>\n

The norm on participation rate on employee service is 30%. That\u2019s 30% participation, not 30% satisfaction. A leader will say: let\u2019s get it to 50% and people will bring forward all kinds of statistics about how that\u2019s impossible. So, the energy goes towards justifying the statistic argument rather than everyone pulling together to make the higher performance goal into reality.<\/p>\n

Imagine if someone said to you they could promise that roughly 15% of their customers would be satisfied with the products they offer. No one would buy from that vendor.<\/p>\n

Yet, that\u2019s the level of engagement, participation and alignment leaders are settling for within their own organization. That\u2019s just way too low when you can invest an incremental increase in time for the phenomenal payoff of true alignment and real commitment. That\u2019s the prize \u2013 that\u2019s what\u2019s transformative.<\/p>\n

What challenges have you encountered in getting your people committed and engaged? Have you identified ways to impact this in your organization? Please share with us \u2013 we would love to hear from you.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Conventional wisdom says that total alignment and commitment is an unrealistic expectation. Everyone knows compliance is as good as it gets. People know what they\u2019re supposed to do. They\u2019re compensated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":740,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,6,10,12],"tags":[16,18,17],"class_list":["post-737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commitment","category-employee-engagement","category-productivity","category-strategic-planning","tag-challenges","tag-commitment-2","tag-engagement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/strategiccommitment.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/strategiccommitment.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/strategiccommitment.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strategiccommitment.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strategiccommitment.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=737"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/strategiccommitment.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":739,"href":"https:\/\/strategiccommitment.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737\/revisions\/739"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strategiccommitment.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/strategiccommitment.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strategiccommitment.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/strategiccommitment.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}