Organizational Alignment
Success Creates Complexity
Organizations don't only lose focus when things go wrong. Success creates its own kind of complexity.
Read observationBusy organizations don't need to do more.They need to align what matters most.
Mission sets priorities. Strategy focuses resources. Culture turns plans into results. Risk tests the choices. For associations, not-for-profits, and mission-driven organizations.
Organizational Blur
Nothing has to go really wrong for clarity to fade and progress to stall.
01
Mission stops deciding
When the mission is vague, outdated, or broad enough to encompass almost anything, it stops helping leaders choose what matters.
02
Priorities multiply
New priorities are added. Old ones remain. The organization stops focusing on what matters most to achieve the mission.
03
Resources spread
Time, money, and talent follow the growing list. Too many things get something; too few get enough.
04
Execution fragments
Talented people work hard, but not always toward the same outcomes. Activity increases more than progress.
05
Risk hides in the gaps
Risk rarely announces itself. It develops between priorities, decisions, resources, and execution. Seeing those gaps early gives leaders more room to act.
The problem isn't any one decision. It's the accumulation. Yesterday's commitments compete with today's priorities and tomorrow's ambitions. When everything matters, choosing what matters most is hard to do.
Where We Start Together
Decide what matters.Align everything around it.
The Alignment LensSM treats Mission, Strategy, Culture, and Risk as one system.
01
Mission
What the organization does to pursue its vision. We start here when that has become too broad, outdated, or difficult to articulate, and therefore less useful in making choices.
02
Strategy
Choices about where limited resources will (and will not) go. We start here when priorities have multiplied faster than resources or outpaced the mission.
03
Culture
What the organization rewards, tolerates, and avoids. This is where the work gets done. We start here when talented people are working hard but not quite together.
04
Risk
We start here to identify what may be coming, understand what is at stake, test assumptions, and decide what the organization is willing to carry and what it is not.
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Not sure where to start?
You see symptoms without knowing the cause. We look across mission, strategy, culture, and risk to find the disconnect and where to start.
How engagements take shape
Engagements can include organizational assessments, board and leadership interviews, strategic planning, executive sessions, retreats and workshops, facilitated decision-making, risk reviews, and ongoing advisory support.
No two organizations arrive with the same problem, so we don't start from the same place. We listen, question, test assumptions, and look beneath the presenting problem to find where Mission, Strategy, Culture, and Risk are aligned. And where they are not.
Why Align MSC
Experience changes what you see.
Erik Pritchard has spent more than 25 years at the intersection of leadership and law. He was a partner at a global law firm, served as General Counsel to four national trade and education organizations, and ultimately became President & CEO of all four. Simultaneously working with four boards and overseeing an annual budget of $23 million.
Along the way, he led organizational change, built and executed strategic priorities, managed through crisis, and made difficult choices about where limited resources would (and would not) go. As outside counsel and General Counsel, he helped organizations pursue ambitious objectives while managing the governance, legal, and strategic risks that came with them.
Erik has seen organizational decisions from the boardroom, the executive chair, and counsel's table. He understands that a good decision rarely belongs to just one category: mission shapes the priority, strategy determines the commitment of resources, culture affects whether it gets done, and risk tests the assumptions and consequences.
Erik isn't there simply to facilitate the conversation. He is there to make it better. To ask the question that hasn't been asked, test the assumptions beneath the discussion, uncover the choices that need to be made, and help leaders decide what matters.
Better decisions often begin with a better question.
Observations
On leadership, mission, strategy, culture, and risk.
MISSION
When Mission Stops Deciding
Too often, an organization’s mission statement is both well-written and mostly useless.
Read observationSTRATEGY
But What Gets Enough?
To paraphrase an old idea: show me where you spend your money and time, and I'll show you your priorities.
Read observationNext step
Request a discovery call.
A short, candid conversation about what matters, what's getting in the way, and what you want to accomplish. If we're not the right fit, we'll say so.