We often see that businesses are built on the dreams of one or more founders. In many cases, they started out as compulsions or stumbled upon a business opportunity, which they were able to encash. After years of work, the businesses grow, teams grow, and the need to expand arises.

There comes an inflection point when the founder(s) realize that taking their organization to the next phase of growth won’t be possible without the active involvement of top leaders in owning the goals, and participating in defining the vision.

This is where the trouble begins. The thought of alignment itself brings forth many thoughts and questions for the founder:

How to align so many different people on a common objective? Why would they participate in that? What if no one aligns? Will that create further disruptions? Will they be able to do without my support? This will be time-consuming.

Doubt, confusion, and frustration take over. Often the businesses continue as is. All the while, the founders’ frustration over not being able to realize their potential, ballooning day by day. Is alignment really that tough? Is it even possible?

Any alignment is challenging unless the foundation is set. From our experience in working with numerous organizations over two decades, certain common threads and learnings have emerged. We believe every organization looking to align itself to achieve its purpose and vision should apply these.

1. Founder’s “WHY” for doing it — is it to serve himself or is it beyond him?

Organizations that were started without clarity of purpose and only as means to earn profits and incomes often become homes to “Heroes”. The purpose of the existence of these organizations is just to fulfill the financial aspirations of the founder, which soon grows into feeding the lust to prove and need for validation. As long as an organization is only a means to fulfill one’s greed and lust, there can never be a Vision for this organization, especially one which is real and sustainable. A true vision will only emerge when the desire of the founder(s) to build the business/ organization comes from their need to fulfill the desire for evolution. In one of the mid-sized tech organizations, once the founder realized his own purpose in life, his organization became one of the many methods for him to fulfill that purpose. It became a platform to allow many other people to fulfill their dreams and realize their potential. This was the beginning of the organization moving from an “exclusive approach” to an “inclusive approach”.

2. Sensitizing people to the need of harnessing their own potential.

Every human wants to grow in their life, and work is one part of the larger scheme of things. The only way to grow is through constantly working on one’s own potential. People need to see and realize that progress in life in all aspects is only possible when one works proactively towards harnessing their own potential. In the same tech organization, when a handful of people underwent an engagement exercise, they were able to introspect, understand themselves, and their desires better. Consequently, they could see the possibility of unlocking their potential and were able to work on that in a systematic manner. This prepared the top leadership to open up and align with the vision and purpose of the Founder.

3. Making them emotionally conscious.

However often we make plans, decide to do something, take major decisions and even realize our purpose, the biggest hurdle we all face is our own emotional compulsions. Our unconscious nature is designed only for survival, and when that compulsion kicks in, nothing else matters. That is where the need to be emotionally conscious is of great importance. It is in the state of being “Sthir” that a human is actually capable of doing anything meaningful and worthy. As the core team of 12 people in this tech company started experiencing emotional consciousness, their lives began to change. The meetings that would run for hours were now joyfully concluded in a matter of minutes. Feelings of competitiveness, jealousy, and fear were transformed into collaboration, teamwork, and empathy. People then wanted to produce success, not for their personal agendas, but because they began finding pure joy in fulfilling the role they wanted to, and success for all became a consequence of that.

4. Having a structure to get people’s thoughts and perspectives on board in a short and crisp way.

All of the above might sound too good to be true. But it is possible! However, the effort to align a senior leadership of 10 plus people (and then their respective teams) can go haywire if not done in a structured manner. The biggest difficulty in alignment is getting everyone’s thoughts on board, hearing them, understanding each perspective, prioritizing key things and then making clear outcome driven goals that can achieve the larger vision and purpose. This organization wanted to do this for a couple of years, and had worked with many consultants to achieve this. Still, even after 15 months into the exercise, they did not even agree on common goals. To add to this, the entire exercise had created a lot of stress for the people involved. However, in a matter of three days, following a blended structure of thinking, writing, collating, debating, prioritizing and summarizing, enabled this team to define what they needed to achieve over the next one year. The whole exercise was a moment of celebration and joy. It not only brought clarity, but also a great sense of satisfaction and excitement for the team. They now wanted to make it happen!

5. Making people producers and not receivers.

Another key hurdle we face in organizations is the collective attitude of being “receivers”. It simply means people lack ownership of outcomes. This feeling comes from being in the “survival mode”, feeling insecure and self-centered. Any organization, or for that matter, a human can truly progress if they take the responsibility of being “producers”. At a granular level, it means that instead of seeking happiness, you produce joy, instead of expecting love, you start loving people, instead of demanding work, you start empowering and developing them. Once people become producers in their own lives, taking ownership of goals and outcomes in the organization comes natural to them. As founders and leaders, your key role is to be a producer and enable others to function as producers in their lives. The rest will take care of itself. As this bunch of 12 had undergone an in-depth engagement of mastering themselves, they had started functioning as producers in their own lives, in their families and in their workplace. So once the roadmap for the organization was laid out, it was a matter of minutes where this team volunteered to pick up ownership of the goals most relevant to them. For the first time, they were not looking at the Founder or anyone else to tell them what they needed to do. They just knew it!

6. Building culture and performance together.

Every organization is constantly trying to balance these two aspects – whether to prioritize performance or culture. And as performance brings tangible results (mostly financial), it is often given the priority. And what happens to the culture of the organization in the short to long term is anybody’s guess. And if organizations give too much emphasis on culture while compromising performance, then it becomes complacent and the question of organization’s survival kicks in sooner rather than later. The truth is it neither can be prioritized over the other, like the pedals of a bicycle, these two have to move in sync. Ensuring culture and performance is a journey and not an outcome. It just needs to be done day in and day out, and the aspects of it keep evolving. One of the best ways to ensure that the organization is balancing both is through monthly review and tracking. Once separate goals and outcomes are set for both culture and performance (and needless to say, these are set by the teams themselves and not just the founder), people need hand-holding in tracking them. Once they do that each month, course correction is easier. Transparency increases and doubts reduce. People feel more settled, and are able to express themselves better. The whole thought of working in an organization for earning a living changes completely to using this as an opportunity to evolve and grow in one’s life.

Alignment is a cultural shift more than anything, and thus it will require time to implement. It is like sowing seeds and doing what needs to be done — watering it regularly, giving it sunlight, trimming the weeds, and allowing magic to happen.

As the Founder(s) adopt this attitude, building their organizations becomes a matter of pleasure for them. And then alignment with anyone is just a breeze!!!