Aligned Operations

  • ​Aligning Your Operations and Vision to Create a Culture of
    ​CLARITY. CONFIDENCE. TRUST.

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  •  Leaders. Management. Teams. 

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  • Solutions and training that inspires, educates and supports fulling work. 

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At Aligned Operations, we believe that every person deserves the opportunity to do fulfilling work in an organization the provides clarity, confidence, and trust.

Clarity

Clarity in an organization means that everyone is free of confusion. There is are clear expectations of how work needs to be completed, to what quantity in a time period, and to what quality. Clarity assures those completing the work have reduced stress.

Confidence

Confidence in an organization means that everyone is free of doubt. Doubt results in poor decision making because no decision is made. Organizational leadership in a requisite organization empower their teams to make confident decisions.

Trust

Trust is the magical ingredient in an organization. It is the two-way street where leaders trust the execution of their teams and teams trust their leaders to support them along the way in operations management.

So how can you create an organization with clarity, confidence and trust? 

Elliot Jacques suggested.......“The most far reaching, dramatic and rapid changes in behavior of individuals in an organization can be achieved by changes in the organization – both in structure and in managerial leadership practices.”


Great things rarely come from people working by themselves. So how do we best work together to achieve a vision with purpose?

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Requisite Culture

Tom Foster explains culture this way:


Company culture is that unwritten set of rules that governs our behavior in the work that we do together. It is unwritten in contrast to our written set of rules, policies, procedures. Culture is often more powerful than any policy we may write or attempt to officially enforce. Often, culture works against our stated policy in operations management.


What is the source of culture, how is it created? These are the four steps in the Culture Cycle:

  1. Develop our beliefs, bias, our experiences…our story. Culture is the story we carry into our experience that provides the lens, the frame, the tint, the brightness or darkness of that story.
  2. The culture drives team behavior. We can’t see each other’s stories, but we can see their behavior.
  3. Behavior, driven by culture, is constantly tested against the reality of consequences. For better or worse, behaviors driven by culture are proven valid, or not.
  4. Behaviors that survive, for better or worse, are institutionalized in our rituals and customs. This  starts with the way a team member sees the organization.


ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN

The organizational structure is the agreed upon assignments of responsibilities based on the division of work. The Requisite Organization is one that will meet the needs of your vision. The Org Chart becomes a model where the horizontal becomes the breakdown of work and the vertical becomes the support hierarchy. This model, or blueprint, allows the organization to be tangible.

The requisite structure of your organization will allow the organization to evolve into the vision. Every organization has a design. It can be a design that is planned and intended, or it will become a design by default. Designs by default rarely serve to evolve the organization to its vision.

The Layers in the Organization

There are three fundamental layers in every successful organization:

The Vision Layer

The organization’s vision is established by the visionary based on a purpose that is based on a guiding belief. The Visionary is often the business owner but can also be a hired CEO. The Vision layer focuses on the “Why” and “What” of the organization.

The Management Layer

The Management Layer is led by an Integrator. The integrator is often referred to as the COO, General Manager, or Operation Manager. The Operations layer is the “How” layer. It determines and coordinates the work throughout the organization into goals. 

The Execution Layer

The Execution Layer is where “the rubber meets the road”. Specialized work forces throughout the organization execute their assigned work based on the instruction and oversight of the management teams of the operations layer. Measurable metric keeping is key. 

What is Operations? 

At Aligned Operations, we define operations as the coordination and execution of work. In our layers listed above, Operations includes layers two and three…Management and Execution. 



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Segmentation and Iteration

Each piece of the organization (segments) needs to evolve together through iterations. Iteration means to do the best with what you have to expand what you have…repeat. The business segments need to align as the organization evolves through these iterations.


There are three primary segments in every organization.  The service or production segment fills capacity. While marketing and sales generates demand. Balance between capacity and demand is vital to an organization’s success. The third segment, Internal Operations, then provide to tools to balance capacity and demand.


So How does Operations align the execution of work to the organization’s vision?


The Organizational Alignment Process

Aligned Operations has developed a 3-step process to align your business organizational structure to your vision.

Take an inventory…start where we stand.

Monitor Performance…are we on the path

Evolve the Organization…to its Vision

What Our Clients Think of Us

As a new manager at a young and growing business, tasks and responsibilities are not always clearly defined.  Working with the OpsMgr program has drastically changed the nature of my managerial duties.  The software provides a unique way of outlining organizational structure, and allowed me to develop the key areas of my department in a clear and concise manner.  The software has shown clear benefits in everything from executing my day to day tasks to effective training of new employees.  Furthermore, OpsMgr offers exceptional opportunities for strategic planning, with specific areas for tracking the development of my departmental goals.  Ambiguity has been removed from my daily tasks, and has resulted in my department and our company as a whole becoming an efficient, well-oiled machine.

Ty Gilbert, Mankato Computer Technology

What Our Clients Think of Us

I Just finishing up some work tonight and wanted to thank you for getting our company organized & efficient.  We are grateful. Keep doing what you do.

Brenda Dietrich, Hardline Concrete & Masonry

What Our Clients Think of Us

As the owner of a small business, I know that it can be easy to get stuck in the trap of working in the business without working on the business. Aligned Operations has helped my business grow and evolve over the last several years. The OpsMgr-6000 tool has helped us build a platform to better define what we do, how we do it and what we plan to do next. OpsMgr-6000 ensures that every employee in the company, from the frontline techs to the owner, knows their role, what is expected of them and outlines their performance baselines. The results have been truly transformative; we have succeeded in building a management team that which actually leads and handles day to day functions, freeing me up to focus on growing the company and moving forward. Decisions are made using objective data, sound information and effective, constructive collaboration across all levels of the organization. The result has been not just a more successful company, but a better place to work and thrive. Our meetings are actually meaningful and productive, not just ritualized exercises in futile communication. Most importantly, we have developed and documented the shared values and culture of the organization, allowing us to articulate and strive for future goals that align with a common and established vision for the organization. I would recommend Aligned Operations for any organization that wishes to clarify their goals and truly start moving toward them.

Wes Gilbert, Mankato Computer Technology

Copyrighted by Aligned Operations 2019