Your strategy is perfect. It’s well-designed and fully informed. You know exactly what the company needs to do.
You’ve done everything you're supposed to. The plan is clear. It's been communicated over and over. Supporting materials, aligned OKRs, and everything else is in place to make it stick. But… some people on your team are still doing things that aren’t aligned with the big picture. Fuu*****k.
What now? What are you supposed to do to get people rowing in the same direction? You know this is important. You need everyone on the same page, working in coordination. Otherwise, you’ll miss out on potential performance and linger in mediocrity, confusion, and frustration. Or, worse, have a competitor eat your lunch.
To make progress, let’s consider two different perspectives from your team.
First is the perspective of those who are doing what you expect. They understand their role and help the common good. Most importantly, they see personal benefits from doing so. They understand how their career advances and how they get the social and professional payoff from contributing to team efforts. They understand how they benefit from playing along, and this choice outweighs all other options. They play along because they see their maximum personal benefit from coordinating with company objectives.
That leaves us with those who aren’t doing what you expect. These are the people who don’t coordinate with the rest of the team, follow their own personal agendas, or generally aren’t falling inline. We must assume that whatever choices they are making, they do so out of rational self-interest. From their perspective, they must think they are doing the right thing. This suggests some incentive structures exist where personal interest is better served by following their own path. Interesting. Now we’re getting somewhere.
What could those structures be? Here’s a few possibilities:
The goal is then to eliminate each structural problem. This will leave the best remaining option as fully-aligned progress. When the optimal path for each individual is to align on company objectives, it’s how everyone wins.
At this point, we have only a list of possibilities. We still need actionable facts to inform how we address the defective structures. When we have the facts that signal what the blocking structures are, we are setup to address and remove them. Once removed, all that remains is the rational choice of aligning with the group. No heavy-handedness, no centralized enforcement. Each person’s free will automatically helps them see their best personal choice is to align with company strategy.
We need to think about what the ‘facts’ about these structures actually are. They are not empirical and scientific, but instead a personal reality. For instance, you see that some managers aren’t aligning with company strategy. This is a fact. The direct report of the misaligned manager notices they are being rewarded for the manager’s wishes, not for the company’s goals. This is also a fact. The aligned manager sees they are getting the recognition and payoff for joining the cause. Another fact. The aligned manager also notices they aren’t getting the support they need from the misaligned manager. A fourth fact. On and on.
The facts lie in the perspective of each individual in your organization. It is what they each see, the relationships among them, and the perspective they have of what is really going on. Everyone sees something different, and all perspectives are valid to the individual observer. Uncovering and combining these perspectives delivers the facts you seek.
When each person contributes their observations to a common pool, you get the intel needed to uncover the hidden structures that cause misalignment.
Each individual observation isn't measurable on its own, but they are when combined. When you map everyone's combined perspective, you get a full picture of all the counterproductive structures in place. The ‘average’ perspective is the ‘correct’ one, and it can change at anytime. You see those working in favor of company alignment and what is breaking down. All the complicated trade-offs, interactions, help, and friction are consolidated and exposed. You can identify the relationships and incentives that drive success or failure. Then, you can take action to change or improve them.
The traditional ways to gather this intel come from two sources: 1) gossip, hearsay, direct communication, and rumor, and 2) the annual review process. We all know that neither of these sources are effective. Instead, The INFIN is the internal network tool specifically designed to help you do this.
The INFIN provides a safe and engaging place for each person to contribute their observations about what is really going on in the workplace. In return, they get the real-time feedback they need to advance their career. Each person receives the true perspective from everyone they work with, while you get the full picture of the blocking structures in your organization. It’s a self-reinforcing feedback loop of alignment: what each person learns about themselves automatically exposes them to how they are, or are not, aligning with team goals.
The ultimate structural misalignment mechanism is unawareness. It is the lack of knowledge about how they fit into the bigger picture. Each person has no idea how they are perceived, and they often misunderstand how to maximize their own personal benefit. When people see these facts without bias or authority, they naturally want to adapt.
This happens because The INFIN shows them the truth about how they are viewed. They get both data and confidential feedback to align them with the reality of their position. When this information is private, it is inefficient, not actionable, and easily misinterpreted. When it becomes known, it calls for change.
When faced with this reality, there emerges the intrinsic incentive to improve it. But, instead of political maneuvering and selfish actions, the only way to improve one’s position is through service toothers. In this setup, self-serving actions are penalized (through the collective judgment of others), while serving others is rewarded (through the same mechanism). The entire incentive structure is flipped from a selfish one to a service one, simply by being a part of the information network.
And guess what they align on? The strategy you laid out for the organization.
Many of the structural issues of misalignment disappear under this shared-knowledge system. Blockers such as training and skill gaps can be quickly identified and addressed. People who resist the new incentive structures can be easily identified and addressed. Those who believe their personal pursuits offer the rewards are quickly corrected, and those who need to develop skills are shown where and how to grow.
Removing what doesn’t work is the key to full organizational alignment. The INFIN leaves your team with the only rational option of effective coordination. Gather the facts, fix the errors, and let people know where they stand. Then, enjoy the upside of having a fully coordinated team incentivized to faithfully execute your strategy.
