Organizational alignment isn't about consensus...

I have long believed that clarity and consensus were prerequisites to organizational change. My belief being, a company cannot move in a cohesive direction until a CEO's executive team achieves a "consensus" opinion as to that direction. In my firm's world, that direction enables the building of brand identity and going to market, strategically guided by two reference points: internal value definition and external value recognition.

But it turns out I've been wrong. Achieving clarity is essential, but achieving consensus is not. I became convinced of this recently upon meeting a gentleman by the name of Miles Kierson.

Mr. Kierson (kiersonconsulting.com) speaks with a quiet confidence. He has been a leadership consultant for over twenty-five years; so when I told him of my many encounters with B2B organizations unable to market and to sell to their full potential, due to their lack of clarity and consensus, he genuinely understood. Then he shared the following observation, which he has also summed up nicely in his book, The Transformational Power of Executive Team Alignment:

"Executive team alignment is only powerful when it is a function of a commitment that has been made in advance. The commitment is this: Whenever a decision is made, I will align with it."

The revelation here is that most CEO's believe they have been moving their companies forward by seeking and getting consensus agreement on mission, message and strategic direction – when in fact, consensus is almost always impossible to achieve. All too often, what a CEO has really been experiencing is silent disagreement, caused by the CEO's failure to communicate up front exactly how he or she intends to arrive at each decision. In his book, Mr. Kierson identifies six different ways a decision can be made, all of them legitimate, but only one of which is by consensus. So when a CEO thinks he's looking for consensus, but the executive team knows otherwise, then "what we have here is failure to communicate." Which leads to organizational entropy and failures to execute.

Communication is a funny, fluid thing. Enlightened, insight-based communication flows from the top down and from the customer back up (value definition/value recognition), allowing wrong-headed beliefs to be eroded or washed away; or more often than not, allowing them to be smoothly, agreeably bypassed to create alignment and momentum.

jb