Align teams before empowering them

If you empower individuals that are not aligned, everyone will push in a different direction and a lot of energy will be wasted as a result. You need to align individuals and teams on what you want to achieve and where you want to get before you can empower them. If you can’t align them, don’t empower them.

The practical elements of team alignment are a clear purpose and output metrics. The team’s #1 responsibility should then be to find and Focus on controllable input metrics. This allows team to know where they need to go, and lets them figure out how to get there.

You align people by developing shared vision, and you empower them by building an operating cadence. That’s why An operating cadence needs shared vision.

Examples

• Amazon’s single-threaded teams (i.e. teams that are fully autonomous and led by a single person) have full autonomy, but they need to have a clear purpose, composition and evaluation metrics. This way, the team knows what they need to execute on, and leadership has a way to evaluate the team.

References

…alignment is the necessary condition before empowering the individual will empower the whole team.

— The Fifth Discipline

• Working Backwards