Your greatest fear could be this picture: An organisation of brilliant minds and innovative ideas. Yet, teams are working in silos, projects are misaligned, and the organisation’s vision seems like a distant mirage.

In the words of Simon Sinek author of Start with Why “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it!”

Creating a shared vision is not as easy as creating the vision and highlighting it on a strategic plan-on-a-page. Implementation barriers loom large, and alignment can be elusive. People are often, most times unknowingly, resistant to change. If you are faced with these types of challenges, you are often left “herding cats”.

To bridge the gap between boardroom dreams and corporate reality, you and other leaders need to take practical, actionable steps. Here are the two that I have seen to be incredibly effective.

Creating a narrative

A huge step to overcoming resistance to change is creating a narrative where teams and individual staff can see that they are part of the story. The impact is more than motivation. When they can see themselves in the story, they can much more easily align their goals and actions to the vision via the narrative.

Enterprise-wide risk management

It may come as a surprise to some, however, the most significant impact in practice of an appropriately implemented risk management program is the break-down of silos and the alignment of programs and projects to corporate objectives.

Programs and projects are aligned by asking questions concerning the uncertainty every leader has around the achievement of their objectives in relation to the key functions, programs and projects under their remit. The silos are busted by communicating the questions and answers within a leader’s team and to other teams via regular reporting.

Put simply, it is all about getting the best information to the brain for decision making, and back again. Just like our central nervous system does in the human body!

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts.