by Nicos & Koralia Timotheou

Business success equals delivery of value! This is shown by multi-nation, lengthy research.

The sole sustainable way of creating value and hence wealth is through delivered value -as perceived by the organization's stakeholders! Leaders who seek to create value as perceived by themselves value are doomed to fail. They try to build on a ‘vision’ detached from reality.

A company exists for a specific purpose which is realized as its mission!

• ​How does the successful leader realize the corporate mission?

Research shows that leaders follow various ways in their effort to accomplish their mission. However, most of them are not successful in the long term –in many cases not even in the medium term. Why?

Being successful requires meeting in a cohesive manner a series of prerequisites:
 

• Achieve a common understanding of what the mission entails and how it can be realized by achieving alignment (the logic and structure to execute) of thinking and acting;

• Win over the majority of the stakeholders, so that they are engaged (they have the desire, willingness and motivation to execute), soul and body, as a coherent team in realizing the mission;
   
• Enthuse the stakeholders by devising a corporate vision and a strategy for continuous innovation and rediscovery, by executing strategic projects aiming at maintaining competitive advantage;
   
• Creating a culture with the right mix of alignment, engagement and strategy based on the corporate values – the corporate code of ethics.
   

Alignment, engagement, culture and strategy are means to the end of creating and delivering value – to all stakeholders!

Value is created and delivered by executing processes in a productive way. The definition of 
the corporate processes demands the identification of fitting competences (knowhow and dexterities), competencies (personal qualities and characteristics), tools (specialized and generic/administrative), capability and willingness to implement the competences and competencies and execute the processes and a high level of conformance with the corporate culture and fitness in the team in which the incumbent must fit!

In summary, effective and efficient mission (i.e. processes) execution as well as vision (i.e. strategic projects) execution demand alignment and engagement, i.e. spiritual fitness and willingness, on top of mental and bodily competence, competency (i.e. capability) and willingness!

Extensive international research⁽¹⁾ shows that very few of the top executives and line managers are aligned in their thinking in the corporate environment they work –the percentage being lower among the ones recruited from outside (one in five fail within 18 months)!

Research concludes that it is important to recruit people who satisfy the above requirements for the particular environment (culture and team fit) of the company besides meeting the process-dictated specifications –enhancing thus significantly the chances of achieving a high level of alignment of thinking.

Once alignment of thinking is achieved, organizational structures and operational systems need to be aligned in such a way that engagement is also optimized. Only then, mission-dictated corporate processes and vision-dictated strategy (i.e. strategic projects) can be productively executed and competitive advantage maintained through continuous innovation in value creation and delivery (i.e. in new / improved products / services, core and support processes and customer servicing).

Misalignment of thinking, structure and systems and/or endeavours to meet misalignment of thinking through restructuring prove recipes for failure.

Similarly, ignoring politics and misalignment and/or engagement concerns and pushing down strategy in an authoritative manner (without simultaneously achieving alignment and engagement) is bound to lead to failure –and this, unfortunately, is the rule in the majority of companies.

It is, therefore, of paramount importance that the issue of alignment be openly discussed with due attention to the sensitivities that may arise. Once again, values and culture are the foundations on which the successful leader builds alignment and engagement!
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(1) The Successful Formula – How Smart Leaders Deliver Outstanding value, Andrew Kakabadse, ISBN: 978-1-4729-1684-6 

17.10.2015