Focused Alignment
There are times when entrepreneurs whisper to me that they’re unsure if they want to be in the game anymore.
They’ve lost their passion.
Submerged under the struggles of balancing employee and client needs, achieving positive momentum feels like a deep-water slog. As the business grows, they find themselves grinding away at work that doesn’t light them up as much as the vision that attracted them into entrepreneurship in the first place.
Last week Joe Chiarella spoke to my Small Business Vistage group. He introduced a model, Strategic Focus Alignment, that offers one explanation around how this level of dissonance can grow between you and your business.
The model defines four personal drivers, called domains of functioning. These map to the value disciplines first introduced by Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema in “The Discipline of Market Leaders.” All four domains are present in each of us, but in varying proportions. As I describe them, maybe one will jump out as your primary orientation:
- If you’re primarily focused on material things and the means to achieve them, your orientation would be physical.
- If ideas and the influence to achieve them light you up, then your orientation would be intellectual.
- If affection and connection with others is a prime concern, then your orientation would be relational.
- Finally, if personal meaning and adherence to beliefs is your primary driver then your orientation would be spiritual.
Alignment occurs when business owners and executives intentionally choose value disciplines (operational excellence, product leadership, customer intimacy, or life of service) for their organization that map to their primary orientation.
Often, though, this alignment is hard to come by. Identifying your primary orientation, articulating it to your team, and manifesting the associated value discipline into specific corporate actions that have value to your customer base are all part of the challenge.
Whether you are aware of it or not, as the leader of the business, your primary orientation will seep its way into the organization. Hints of it will take shape in the questions you ask, the metrics you pay attention to, and the actions you take.
Yet until you intentionally name the core values, or disciplines, of the business, employees are left to intuit what’s important. They may try to read, and end up misreading, your subtle clues. They may make the values up based on what’s important to them (how they orient) or what was important at the last place they worked. These may or may not be the values disciplines that are the best fit for you and your business.
Multiple and conflicting priorities arise. Confusion abounds. Employees move in directions that don’t make sense. Infighting and misdirection ensue. Your organization has become misaligned and you’re not even sure if you want to work there anymore. This is the dissonance I hear about – the pain of working so hard for something that you’re not sure if you want to be part of anymore.
There is a pressure in most entrepreneurial organizations to get moving and get making money. Taking time to reflect on who you are and how that can best inform the kind of business you ought to run can feel like a different kind of slog. Yet it’s critical, foundational work that really never ends as you, your business, and the market shift and grow over time.
~
Leadership Development Practices to help you engage with these concepts in your own leadership development journey:
How Do You Orient? This week’s practice is based on an exercise Joe suggested to help identify your orientation within the physical, intellectual, relational, and spiritual domains of functioning. Throughout your week, play close attention to the choices that come before you. When you have limited time, what do you choose to focus on? When you have limited attention, what do you choose to give it to? When you have limited funds, what do you choose to spend it on? Throughout the week, what patterns begin to emerge for you with regards to how you prioritize these domains of functioning within your life?
