Good leaders, real leaders ask themselves tough questions about the state of their organizations. When they see something not going quite right, or if it’s going wrong, they search for the why. They even include looking at themselves as a potential cause.

Leaders usually connect these questions to performance or culture, but they’re connecting them in the wrong way. These questions, or similar ones, are:

• Why aren’t we executing our strategic plan well?
• We can’t I tie employee engagement score movement to performance changes?
• Why aren’t departments and teams working better together?
• How can I reduce the politics and bureaucracy in our organization?
• Our leadership team seems in sync with what we want to do. Why isn’t that being driven through the organization?
• Why can’t we communicate better as an organization?
• Why aren’t we living up to our Mission? I talk about it frequently.
• Do employees believe in my leadership?
• Am I as effective in leading this organization as I think I am?

These questions tie into the dynamic of how employees perform their tasks and interact with one another. However, they really all relate at a higher level – alignment of employees to your organization’s mission, vision and strategic plan.

When employees understand the mission and vision of your organization, and understand how their role and the roles of others fit into that mission and vision, great things can happen.

When employees within and across teams understand mission and vision, they work to find common purpose. They communicate more effectively. They find ways to remove the kinks of bureaucracy. The organization becomes truly effective…and engaged.

Alignment to mission, vision and strategic plan, at every level, is where great leaders bring to their organizations.

If you are asking any of these questions and you don’t quite have the answers yet, let’s have a conversation about your situation and maybe give you some insights that might help focus your process.

Aligning your organization to its mission, vision and strategic plan should be Job Number 1 for you. How would you assess your performance?

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