Services:

Roles, Goals, Relationship Alignment

FAQ’s

The following information addresses some typical questions people have about the alignment process.

1. What does a work cycle stage / phase model look like?

Examples:
1. Road Construction – Design/Build Project Life Cycle

2. Sales & Marketing: Customer Planning Cycle

3. Product Development Cycle: Cross-functional View

Once the general phases or stages of a work cycle have been identified the process provides methods for identifying key tasks / responsibilities and developing agreements and plans.

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2. What does a typical session include?

The alignment sessions generally involve some combination of the following:

• Identifying the work (goals, processes, tasks, plans).
• Determining who does what (roles/responsibilities).
• Reaching agreements on the kinds and amounts of help and support needed (working relationships).
• Establishing the methods for tracking and evaluating progress.

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3. What are some types of situations in which organizations have used the alignment process?

Alignment Around Annual Business Goals

A business in the electronics industry needed its key functional areas in the US, Europe and far east to establish cross-functional goals in order to meet new competitive challenges. The alignment session helped them address three key questions:

Q. What is the priority work we need to accomplish?
Q. What working relationships do we need to have in order to achieve that work?
Q. How will we track and measure progress?

Moving to a Cross-functional Organization Structure

A sales and marketing organization had re-organized to be more responsive to its customers and those customers’ customers. They used the alignment session to develop clear roles and responsibility and establish relationships based upon collaboration, support and rapid decision making.

A business unit of a specialty chemical company looking for lower cost and greater efficiencies used the work alignment session as a way to clarify the roles and responsibilities within their organization which had formerly operated in separate groups, each with its own marketing, sales, R&D, tech service and customer support people.

Developing Role Interface

A small, rapidly expanding technology company was experiencing increasing tension between the sales and installing groups. The alignment processes help them see the issues were, in large measure, due to lack of a business process linking sales, installation and service. The owners, with input from employees, re-aligned people into cross functional teams, created a more disciplined approach to the work that insured task completion at each phase of the work was documented.

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4. How is a session designed?

Each Roles/Goals and Relationships Alignment Session is designed to meet the needs of a particular company. There are three very straight forward questions that need to be answered:

1. What are the specific outcomes of the session?
   The answer to this question is the responsibility of the session’s senior sponsors. They may decide to involve input from a representative group of those who will be in attendance.
2. What experiences, activities, tasks, etc. are needed during the session in order to achieve those outcomes?
   Typically a small design team comprised of a member of the senior leadership team and representatives from the pool of attendees work with ROC to help gather information identify key issues and opportunities needed to create the session agenda and pre-work.
3. What preparation is needed (i.e. communication from the session sponsors, interviews, participant pre-work, etc.) so that people come to the session ready to take advantage of the experiences needed to achieve the session outcomes?

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