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Effort to Align

I feel excited most mornings on my way to work. Yes or No

Work in 2009 will be different than the past few years. There will be fewer people with much more to do. Teams will likely be smaller and asked to produce faster. Everyone will be required to rethink how they work. Individually or as a team, people will need to improve performance by being fully engaged and focused on the right things together more than ever before.

In his new book, “Great Business Teams” Howard M. Guttmann states that for an organization to raise its level of performance, every team,must be aligned in five key areas:

Business strategy
Business deliverables coming from the strategy
Roles and responsibilities at individual and business unit or functional levels
Ground rules for decision making and conflict resolution
Interpersonal relationships

Your career needs to be aligned in five areas as well. Uncertain times call out to each person to be certain of being:

Attuned to how your organization and profession will change in the next few years
Aware of what skills will be needed to be highly effective in the future
Articulate in how your success is measured for your job
Absorbed in learning better ways to manage projects and lead people
A mentor in your organization and to colleagues outside

Working Journal Entry: Rate your team and your career on each of the items above on this scale: 1 Aligned 2 Not aligned 3 I don’t know. If you do this exercise you might see some areas to concentrate on this year, and that would be good. You might also become aware of some factors which influenced your yes or no answer at the top of the page, and that would be even better.
What effort will you make to align your leadership and life in 2009 ?

“O Lord, thou givest us everything at the price of an effort.” – Leonardo da Vinci

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