Performance Management: Putting Research into Action

How Important Is Alignment?

In order to understand alignment most broadly, I examined published and unpublished research, the practices of some purportedly stellar organizations, and published accounts of alignment in action. To better understand the practitioner viewpoint, I also interviewed over forty executives from a variety of industries, geographies, and senior roles (for example, CEOs, COOs, CHROs, and VPs of learning) to obtain their viewpoints on alignment, ranging from the critical success factors to what works and doesn’t work in practice.

While none of the senior executives I interviewed and researched regarding alignment thought it was easy, they all described its importance in various ways. GE assumes alignment as a prerequisite ...