The Power of Alignment: How Great Companies Stay Centered and Accomplish Extraordinary Things

Great book! The basic premise is that once a business has a raison d'etre, or a 'main thing', that profits are maximized by the alignment of four key business areas: Strategy, Processes, People, and Customers. Built on this premise are actionalbe ways to build a self-aligning organization. I got the sense of discovering truth while I read this book. Leadership isn't really about power, it is about responsibility. This book shows a manager at any level how to align his area to the overall strategy of the company and to the end products of the company. It shows how processes should be designed and what factors should be used to reward, recognize and evaluate employees. Great food for thought and realistic to implement. Five Stars

Quite simply, this book was one of the best business management and leadership books I have ever read. It was well-written and expertly balanced management and leadership concepts with real-world examples of effectively aligned organizations, such as Federal Express and Southwest Airlines. This book should be read and discussed by leaders and managers at all levels, especially by mid- to senior-level executives. In brief, alignment deals with the relationships among the people, processes, strategy, and customers of an organization relative to that organization's purpose, or what the authors called "the main thing." Alignment is both a noun, a state of being, and a verb, a set of actions. Vertical alignment connects organizational strategy with the people responsible for transforming that strategy into meaningful work. Horizontal alignment deals with understanding your customers' wants and then creating processes to deliver what your customers want, when and how they want it. Effective leadership nurtures the organizational culture that is built around and upon "the main thing," and it is this culture and leadership combination that drives and sustains self-aligning organizations in turbulent times.The authors' analogy of landing a plane helped me to visualize the dynamics involved with organizational alignment. To land a plane, a pilot must adjust and react to multiple simultaneous factors and conditions (i.e. air speed, altitude, angle of approach, wind speed and direction, etc.) and then understand how a change in one will affect the others. Likewise, to align an organization, a leader must adjust and react to feedback about his people, processes, strategy, and customers, and then understand how a change in one will affect the others. The authors clearly and thoroughly explained the alignment factors and conditions throughout the book. They followed their explanations with incisive questions for readers to ask about themselves and their organizations to assess their degree of alignment. Those questions were definitely a highlight of the book for they really helped to stimulate my thinking and should help inspire organizational progress to alignment. Another highlight was the appendices that contained examples of actual tools and products used and created by some of the aligned organizations studied by the authors. The inside back cover jacket sums up why I give the book my highest recommendation: "Essential reading for all managers and executives, "The Power of Alignment" offers a new way to reestablish focus and sustained energy, and is a dynamic approach for staying balanced and achieving extraordinary levels of performance."

This is the best book that I have ever seen about how's a company staying centered. I think this is the essence of business for any firms in order to survive. The above book not only gives us insight and explanation . And its also gives us guidelines and practical procedures. This book has no ramshackle business theory. I think it should classified as a classic business book.

As a university professor and consultant, I have read a lot of material on strategic planning. This book is one of the best. It is all about getting focused and centered as an organization. It goes beyond the theory and gives practical advice on just how to do that. I am considering making it required reading for my graduate students.

The Power of Alignment: How Great Companies Stay Centered and Accomplish Extraordinary Things by George Labovitz and Victor Rosansky, ***** What follows is an excerpt of an article written by Steve Gibbons of The Principal Financial Group for the National AQP periodical: "The main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing!" We've heard it before and it makes sense. But, in today's busy world where the leader's job looks more like a juggling act - it's hard enough identifying the main thing, let alone keeping it the main thing. Well, help is out there in form of an insightful, well-written book by George Labovitz and Victor Rosansky - The Power of Alignment: How Great Companies Stay Centered and Accomplish Extraordinary Things. This book cuts through the consultantese and helps the reader understand alignment and why it is critical to organizational success in a straightforward easy to understand manner. The first things I discovered in reading the book was how freely the authors share good usable information. The book is full of best practices you can read one day and put to use the next. For every concept they share - there's an anecdote to illustrate it and specific practices or tools to effectively implement the concept. The book's premise is based on the belief that for a business to be successful it must, "align the four essential elements that together create growth and profits: strategy, customers, people, and processes." It is only through an approach that aligns all four elements that organizations achieve long term success. The authors lay out the fundamentals of alignment, how it's created and maintained, and creating a self-aligning organization. Favorite new terms: Vertical alignment - Vertical alignment brings together the strategy of the organization and its people, allowing them to take effective action. How many times have we heard about a wonderful strategy that failed because it was never effectively deployed? The authors believe, "When strategy is created with the involvement of employees and customers and deployed rapidly and well, it releases the untapped energy of employees and aligns activities and intentions." Horizontal alignment - Horizontal alignment is about the connection between customers and the organization's processes. To be a successful market driven company, it is critical to understand customer needs and expectations and align processes accordingly. The authors state, "...horizontal alignment infuses the concerns of customers into everything the organization does. Horizontal alignment links the company's actions with customer needs in ways that delight and create loyalty." The message from this book I'll remember 10 years from now: "The activities and behaviors of people at every level must be aligned with the main thing." Organizations must understand what the main thing is that drives success and focus on it. Lack of focus creates an