Case Study: Alignment and managing up
Misalignment is one of the most pervasive problems in business. I’d go so far as to say that half or more of all avoidable problems are caused by people not being on the same page about goals, expectations, deadlines, priorities, and so on.
At my current workplace there’s a new CEO (<2 years) who is an expert in [specialist field]. The business has recently entered this field, and this has become a growth priority under the new CEO’s leadership. As this segment got off the ground, the CEO has been setting direction in the form of direct instructions on what actions to take to grow the segment.
As I work in a mature business (see “The first 90 days”), this new segment is completely, but sensibly, under-resourced and its sole employee is a lone product manager (“PM”). Previously, the PM used to report directly to the CEO but, given constraints on time, now reports to the 2IC of the business.
I work closely with this PM. While I am available to consult on request, I have pitched in and told the PM to consider me “part of their team”. An extra pair of hands and someone to share the mental load with can make a huge difference, and we have an excellent working relationship. One of the issues we ran into recently was that we were three months(!) into a new initiative when the CEO told the PM to change direction. Actually - we’re going to go in the same direction but execute differently, and it’ll involve throwing out most of the work we’ve done so far.
What happened?
Well, that was my question. Being new to the business I’m light on context for this new segment, but as I dug into the situation, I realised there were several potential issues:
There’s a gap between strategy and initiatives
The strategy is set by the CEO and the Head of Strategy, but it is quite high-level. It could be fairly summarised as “acquire customers”
The CEO and Strategist spend <1% of their time working on this segment as it is a trivial part of an otherwise large business
As a result, the PM de facto runs this part of the company, and given extreme resource constraints, prioritises based on the quickest & easiest wins, which don’t always align to the large strategic goals
There was a gap in communication
The PM believed they had adequately communicated priorities and initiatives to the CEO (they meet fortnightly) and believed they had buy-in to proceed
When instructed on what to do next, the PM felt that the CEO did not consider to the work that had been done & rationale behind their previous decisions, and was instead giving instructions based on an unrealistic vision & low context on the segment
The PM did not feel comfortable calling this out to the CEO when I suggested it. This is not an area where I will get involved unless things degenerate massively.
The initiatives we are pursuing were not aligned to the strategy
Broadly speaking there are two opportunities in this product - “find more customers” and “do a better job for existing customers”. Both are large in dollar terms and there is a good chance that doing more for existing customers could be even more $ valuable than finding new customers.
The overall strategic goal is to “acquire [X,000] customers” at a consistent pace.
The initiatives that we’re pursuing, and those that the CEO is instructing us to pursue, are focused on existing customers rather than acquiring new customers
The last time the strategy was revisited was ~18 months ago
When queried, the PM can’t remember most of what was in the strategy document, and the document itself needs to be dug up from some folder in the cloud drive somewhere; it’s not front and centre in these discussions
Put all of this together and you will be precisely 0% surprised that that this team hasn’t reached agreement on direction. But – this stuff happens allllllll the time and it’s really hard to see when you’re in the middle of it. This is a classic the way we work / the way we do the work type of problem.
In this situation, the “way to do the work” question you should ask would be something like:
“We’ve just had a misalignment that cost us a lot of time. What do we need to do to avoid this in the future?”
The following would be a really good start:
what is the goal - where do you want the business to be in 1-3 years
what is the strategy - what are the high-level directives we will pursue in order to reach the goal
what are the initiatives we could action - what are the specific things we can do as part of the strategy
how do we prioritise the initiatives - what is important/achievable right now
Lastly, and I’ll devote a whole section to this because it’s important, MAKE SURE to ask:
“What are we not going to do, and what is the impact of this?”
This is the hardest part of the whole show. Every leader I’ve seen, including me, experiences real difficulty looking at promising initiatives and saying “yes, we will deliberately ignore these for a year because they are not the priority”. This is really hard and most of the time it just proves impossible. The temptation, and common outcome, is to go “nah we’re going to do those too”. And then leadership checks back in 6 months and says, “hey why haven’t we made progress on [non-priority initiative]”. So, then everyone tries to do two things at once with the common result that neither gets done particularly well.
Obviously - do not do this. And even if you do, DO. NOT. SKIP. THIS. DISCUSSION. If you follow this advice and have the “what are we not doing” discussion, you will grant yourself (or your boss) the future gift of improved prioritisation. You’ll see where it goes wrong, and you’ll be more likely to recognise your mistake. (“we agreed on the things that we weren’t going to do, oh but hey, looks like we’re trying to do them. Surprise!”)
So. How do we get this product manager & that product into a better position, given limited information on why the CEO is making those decisions?
The solution is relatively simple. Get people in the same room and start from the top. What is the goal. What is the strategy. What are the initiatives we could pursue. Which initiatives are we actually going to pursue and why. What are we not going to do. Reach agreement on those, start work, realign periodically (quarterly or so) and check in on progress regularly (weekly-monthly).
That is the way to a clearer path forward and less frustration.
Unfortunately, this story has an unhappy ending. That product manager left the role in frustration at the lack of resources, unclear direction, and perceived inability to deliver progress on the strategy.
Which is a lesson in itself, isn’t it?