Doing work for any reason other than achieving the strategic objectives of the organisation is the wrong reason for doing work.
In traditional organisations, departments have reigned over the organisation. Each department has taken care of its own concerns instead of taking care of the overall organisation. For example, a technical department of an organisation may pursue the latest technical developments without thinking about the real business needs of the organisation.
To fix the problem and achieve alignment, ensuring that everything the organisation does is based on strategic considerations, organisations resort to various management strategies. These techniques include the Balanced Scorecard, Portfolio Management and Project Management.
The Balanced scorecard ensures strategy is translated into initiatives, clearly identified and mapped to strategic objectives. Portfolio Management helps identify, evaluate, select, prioritise, and balance the work of the organisation towards the achievement of certain goals. Project Management manages each single project of the portfolio towards successful completion.
This move by organisations has shifted the focus from fulfilling the strategy of departments to projects. Departments, management, and all employees have become resources used to complete projects successfully. This may sound like common sense, and some wonder why a big deal is made out of strategic alignment when it is just a logical part of doing business.
In reality, what seems like common sense on paper often becomes easily forgotten. To demonstrate, check the projects undertaken by your organisation. Firstly, try to find out why the project has been undertaken. Most answers will probably relate to the specific objectives of the project, like "We are building a new programme" or "constructing a new building" or "launching a new marketing promotion for a product."
These are the objectives of the project, but not why the organisation is doing the work. There has to be a business need tied to strategy for which a project is undertaken. The answer to why we are doing this project has to be something like "We are trying to increase revenues from this market segment," or " We want to improve our image in the region," or "We want to improve our competitiveness." All these are business needs, not just project objectives. Most workers in the organisation will be oblivious to this business need even if they recognise the specific project objective.
In the case of work done for clients, you may get a different answer for why we are doing this project: "We are doing this to get paid by our client and make money." This again is not strategy. A strategy cannot be just about making money. If it were, then Telecom companies would start delivering pizza to make money, and construction companies might start importing grain. Making money has to come from achieving strategic objectives towards the attainment of the company's vision and fulfilment of its mission. Sometimes, a project may not have a business need. It is undertaken for a specific project objective yes, but that specific objective may not fulfil a strategic objective. For example, a manager feeling that the department needs a new software, or needs to move to nicer offices. These may not be strategic, and money will be wasted on these wants of the manager that may not be real needs of the organisation.
Today, more and more organisations are focusing further on their strategic objectives and demanding alignment from the whole organisation. That is a good thing. One of the telling signs that a company is focused on its strategy and vision is when they refuse business from clients when it does not fulfil their strategy. "Sorry, we do not offer this service at this time," is an answer that indicates focus on strategy, professionalism, and respect to the customer. However, when a company takes any business that comes its way, it loses focus and wastes energy that has to be expended on realising its vision.
By Ammar W. Mango
© Jordan Times 2006
