Entrepreneurs starting a business typically begin with a small, cohesive group of people, all of whom have a solid grasp of the company's customer value proposition. Because of small size many members of the entrepreneurial organization wear many hats, such as CEO, chief technician, head of HR. Because they understand the end-to-end process by which the company creates and enhances value for its customers, the small business tends to remain collectively in sync.

As the business grows and the staff gets progressively busier, demands on the organization tend to elicit reactive responses. Those wearing many hats grow to value new heads on which to park some of those hats. People get hired, and hats get offloaded. As growth continues, there is typically a degradation of the intimacy that characterized the startup...the forest enlarges and vision begins to focus on the trees. Responses to stresses and requirements of the business environment take the form of quick fixes. The "house" grows with many ad hoc additions, but no defined architecture to ensure alignment of component parts.

New heads that are now wearing just one hat will certainly strive for order and alignment, but that pursuit of order tends to be confined to the arena associated under that one hat. Boundaries are defined in an effort to limit complexity, and often walls are constructed along those boundaries to create organizational silos. Rules are promulgated in the interest of order in the silo, and typically, the silo hat wearer is responsible for silo performance. After all, he can't be held responsible for things outside of the silo that he alone can't control, right?

At some point it may be recognized that the vertical organization of functional silos is out of sync with the horizontal process of creating value for customers, but there's a quick fix for that: the matrix organization. With a simple overlay of vertical silos on horizontal, customer focused processes , the big picture is theoretically brought back into focus. Unfortunately, the enabling organizational capabilities of shared mindset and collaboration are likely missing, and the matrix fosters only complexity and confusion.

Performance metrics could serve as agents for organizational alignment, but they generally do not. More often than not, metrics are selected on the basis of regulatory or reporting requirements or simply because they are conveniently available. If a silo mentality exists, silo metrics likely follow without regard to alignment with organizational focus/strategy. Since what gets measured gets managed, out-of-alignment metrics will yield out-of alignment effort and consumption of resources.

Perhaps the single greatest alignment concern for organizations has to do with rewards. Because organization culture consists of a set of feelings, beliefs, and behaviors that have been rewarded over time, it should come as no surprise that observed behaviors do not necessarily conform to articulated values. When a "star" employee reaps rewards for hitting his numbers while wreaking havoc among those around him, it teaches people what is truly valued in the organization.

If we can agree on the notion that organizational alignment does not just happen, and that the benefits when all of its various parts are working synchronously, then we might agree that it would be worthwhile to make alignment a priority and seek to make it a reality. The key is having an overall architecture that addresses: who we are, why we work, what we do, where we're going, how we work together, and what is important around here. This context becomes foundational: Every employee sees how her job contributes to desired business results; every decision is made in accordance with org values. Furthermore, every investment, especially concerning employee development, contributes to the desired future vision. It's not natural. It won't just happen. But you can make it happen.