Effective communication is essential for any organization that wants to increase efficiency and ensure that all teams are working towards the same objectives. If you're ready to implement new strategies into your operations, it's important that everyone in your organization understands your short-term and long-term business goals. This isn't a new concept, but rather it has been developed over 50 years of academic and practical use. Ideally, the IT and business sectors should be perfectly aligned, with IT providing business leaders with the strategic plans and resources needed to achieve maximum performance, efficiency, and benefits. Employee development initiatives are most effective when they contribute to achieving company goals.
With clear business objectives, you can also create key performance indicators (KPIs) that will help you evaluate the effectiveness of your training. This reduces the gap between strategy formulation and execution by ensuring that all elements of the organization work towards a common set of objectives. A strong interpersonal relationship is powerful because it “compares IT initiatives with business growth plans”, says Deb Gildersleeve, IT director at application creation platform developer QuickBase. It's important to find stories and identifiable human perspectives that can help shape the identity of the organization. A regular portfolio of high-impact projects will boost the PMO as the company feels the effect of dopamine when it sees progress.
While people tend to lean towards work conversations in their one-on-one meetings, it's also an important time to talk about growth and development. For example, when selecting projects for next year, many organizations present those projects to senior management and leave it up to the management team to determine the strategic alignment for themselves. They were able to have their executive team develop criteria and then empower the executive team to rate the projects. Over the past few decades, much academic research has been done on the effects of strategic alignment on organizational performance. To ensure that organizational development initiatives are aligned with business strategy, it's important to create a plan that outlines specific objectives related to employee knowledge, skills, and abilities. This plan should also include key performance indicators (KPIs) that will help you evaluate the effectiveness of your training.
Additionally, it's essential to build strong interpersonal relationships between IT and business sectors so that they can work together towards common objectives. Finally, when selecting projects for next year, make sure that senior management is involved in determining strategic alignment.
