Strategic Alignment

Chapter 10: Organizational Alignment

Strategic alignment is when companies or organizations modify their processes, hierarchies, trainings, or reward systems to better suit their new competitive strategies. It is necessary for a company to pursue strategic alignment in order to convince the public, inside and out, that their changes are organizational-wide and represent a new "way of doing things" within the company. An organization can communicate their message on only a superficial level unless effective changes are made. Without strategic alignment, an organization's attempt to convince customers or members of their new emphasis on service may fall on deaf ears when human resources does not return calls to employees or customer service remains inadequately staffed.

My experience with strategic alignment has been almost exclusively within political campaigns. Ineffective press outreach and plodding field campaigns have been the most obvious reasons for campaigns to hire new staff, argue that they are changing the scope and direction, and putting out a press blitz to highlight their strategic alignment. This has normally followed complaints from "political insiders" who feel that they have no had enough say in the campaign's structure or direction. These strategic alignments have mostly caused changes in strategy, staffing, and structure leading outside figures to believe that major shakeups have created a new vision for a struggling campaign.