Leadership Line of Sight

Having a “line of sight” means everyone being able to articulate how their current work is part of reaching the larger vision and supports the organization's core strategies.

Many organizations have an annual process to create line of sight, where the “how’s” at each level turn into the “what’s” at the next level, which generates new “how’s,” which cascades all the way down the organization. This top-down approach is helpful but incomplete. It improves clarity--but shortchanges adaptability--and the cascading is rarely effective enough.

In a dynamic environment, direction that is too rigid constrains innovation and experimentation. However, innovation and experimentation without a structure to test against tends to wander off course. Both lead to rationalizing failures as due to unforseen circumstances.

So, how do you accommodate both needs--for top-down clarity and bottom-up innovation?

Signet helps leaders build alignment through sets of cascading priorities, and find the balance between rigid alignment and situational reactivity. Leaders learn to separate the what from the how at each organizational level, which allows an emphasis on outcomes and measures on one hand and, on the other, deliberately innovating against those outcomes using an Emergent Learning discipline, largely built into the work itself.

<< Integrate Leadership, Learning, Execution     Accountability >>