• Culture & Collaboration Strategies
• Hybrid & Remote Work

Summary

• When leadership teams are aligned on workplace strategies, it reduces uncertainty and increases organizational efficiency—ensuring that everyone can work towards common goals.
• Aligned leadership avoids mixed messages and resource misallocation, leading to clear communication and higher productivity. This involves making sure all team members have the technology and support they need, irrespective of their work model.
• Consistency in workplace policies as a result of leadership alignment boosts employee morale. It shows a commitment to accommodating diverse work preferences, creating a more inclusive and supportive environment.
• Start with collecting feedback from team leaders, then organize a strategy alignment workshop for open discussion and perspective sharing, set common goals, and develop a unified strategy.
• Clearly communicate the agreed-upon strategy to the organization and assess the necessary upgrades in technology and space to support this strategy. ET Group can help by providing consulting services and recommending technology that fits your organizational needs.

Why Your Leadership Team Must Be Aligned on Your Workplace Strategy

Unified leadership streamlines your team’s decision-making and makes your entire organization more efficient. When leadership is aligned on how work happens and why, it reduces uncertainty for everyone in the workplace and gives them the confidence to do their best work—whether they’re embracing remote and hybrid work or relying more on an in-office model.

Below, we explain how to create an effective workplace strategy with your leadership team. Read on to find steps for collecting feedback, setting goals together, and finding consensus on the technology and strategy that will set you up for success.

The Real Impact of Leadership Alignment

When the people in leadership roles at your organization are on the same page, everyone benefits. This has countless advantages—some easier to quantify than others—but let’s look at a few of the most obvious and important ones.

Communication

Differing views on remote work can lead to mixed messages—which can lead to confusion and conflict between teams or departments.

Regular updates and consistent messaging from an aligned leadership team ensures that everyone understands the way your workplace works and the tools it uses.

Productivity

Misaligned leadership leads to misallocated resources—resulting in underused office space, inadequate remote work support, and other problems that can delay projects and disrupt workflows.

When your leadership team is clear on the way your workplace is configured and used, it’s easier to make sure team members have access to the technology and support they need.

Morale

When there’s inconsistency in workplace policies, employees often feel their preferences and work styles are not being considered. This leads to a sense of dissatisfaction and disconnection from the company’s objectives.

Communicating clear goals and strategies for achieving them actually helps your leadership demonstrate their commitment to accommodating diverse work preferences. This fosters a more inclusive and supportive work environment, leading to higher job satisfaction, stronger employee engagement, and a positive organizational culture.

Key Steps for Aligning Your Leadership

Collect Feedback from Team Leaders & Employees

When it comes to choosing the model and technology your workplace will use, different members of your leadership group and their team members may have different preferences. Gathering feedback before you meet with them sets you up for constructive conversations where everyone’s perspective is considered.

• Try conducting a survey or requesting written feedback from people in key leadership roles so that they can express their needs and raise concerns.
• Get leaders to check-in with their individual teams for feedback, so that you ensure you are capturing an accurate picture of your organization. 
• Use this feedback to structure the agenda for a meeting where you and the rest of your leadership team discuss your options and determine the next steps.

For Example:

Let’s say that your new workplace strategy involves decisions about the extent to which your organization will embrace hybrid work. You’ll need to ensure that your team shares an understanding of the different options available (from distributed and asynchronous to entirely co-located).

Key questions to ask your leadership team might include:

• Which of the options best describes the way you currently work?
• Which option best describes the way you worked one year ago? What about two years ago?
• What changes have you witnessed and what factors do you think contributed to them?
• Looking forward, where do you want to be in a year? What about two years?
• Is this a vision you share with your colleagues? Why or why not?

We’ve written extensively about this topic in the past with WORKTECH Academy. Learn more about how to successfully set up a company strategy for hybrid work.

Organize a Strategy Alignment Workshop

Once you have a clear understanding of the different opinions held across your leadership team, you should plan a workshop to discuss and surface them openly. This allows members to share their perspectives with each other and promotes collaborative decision-making.

It’s important to understand the barriers that exist between your team and the strategy you want to create, but it’s also critical to avoid blame and allow everyone’s voice to be heard. Ensure that you create an environment of psychological safety, where leaders feel safe to speak their mind.

• Start with a round-table discussion where all different viewpoints are summarized briefly for the group.
• As an experiment, have leaders pair up and present their partner’s viewpoint as accurately as possible to the group. This is a great activity for fostering empathy and facilitating broader perspectives.
• Share insights from employee surveys, productivity metrics, and industry trends related to workplace models. This will inform your decision-making with objective data.

ET Group offers free workshops that help organizations to surface the potential blind spots and challenges hindering effective hybrid collaboration alongside other senior industry leaders. Register today or reach out to us for help facilitating a workshop designed for your leadership team.

Set Common Goals

Once all perspectives have been heard and understood, you can start identifying commonalities and using them to develop shared goals. Develop a list of questions that you might answer to better align your organization on its shared priorities. 

• Revisit your company culture and make sure it supports the model you’re using—for example, using virtual team-building exercises if your new strategy encourages remote work.
• Evaluate your current technology and its capabilities. Is it easy to use? Does it allow your remote and in-office team members to connect seamlessly or does it create friction? Read more about how to design effective conference and video meeting rooms.
• Decide what upgrades you’ll need to make to ensure that your equipment and facilities support the new strategy.
• Determine how you’ll measure productivity under the new strategy, and put support in place for ensuring a consistent experience for all team members. We offer audio visual support services that can provide you with important insights on how your workplace technology is being used and proactively address any IT issues you experience before they impact workflow.

Develop Your Strategy

Use the answers to the questions you asked in the step above to determine a list of shared priorities. These will help guide the framework for your new workplace strategy, informing the model (remote, hybrid, in-office, etc.) you’ll use and the technology you’ll need for it.

Now you should have everything you need to draft a strategy that reflects the collective decision and aligns with business goals. For more information on this, see: How to Create a Hybrid Work Policy for Your Office.

Test and Prototype Your Workplace Strategy

When your leadership team has found consensus on how you’ll work and what technology you’ll need, you can formulate a plan to test and prototype this strategy with a wider group in your organization. Here’s an outline of the process you might follow:

• Identify pilot groups: Select smaller teams or departments within your organization to serve as pilot groups for testing the new workplace strategy.
• Define metrics for success: Clearly outline the key performance indicators (KPIs) or metrics you’ll use to evaluate the effectiveness of the new strategy within the pilot groups
• Conduct training and support: Provide adequate training and support to the pilot groups to ensure they understand the new strategy and have the necessary resources to implement it effectively.
• Gather feedback: Regularly collect feedback from the pilot groups regarding their experiences with the new strategy, including any challenges they encounter and suggestions for improvement.
• Iterate and refine: Use the feedback gathered from the pilot groups to iterate on the workplace strategy, making adjustments and refinements as necessary before rolling it out to a wider audience.

Alignment Leads to Better Outcomes

The more planning you and your leadership team do at the front end, the easier it is to create a strategy that benefits everyone at your workplace. Taking the time to understand the different views within your organization and find common ground lets you build a strategy 

Use the steps above to start planning your next moves, and reach out to us for additional support. Our experts can consult with you to clarify your organization’s needs and create a specific plan to make sure the technology you use helps your people meet them.

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