How to Diagnose and Fix Organizational Misalignment

This post is part 3 of 3 of the blog series: Map vs. Territory. If you haven’t read the first and second posts, Why Organizational Alignment Matters, 3 Places Organizational Alignment Hides, go and do that now.

Once you know a gap exists somewhere in structure, communication, or systems, the next step is figuring out exactly what you are looking at. This is the secret sauce to the process I walk clients through.

Start by asking the people doing the work, at every level, how they get things done. When they tell you how they are supposed to happen, ask them how things really work. Ask what they would tell a brand new hire on their first week, off the record. The distance between the official answer and the honest one is often the clearest signal you will get.

Then watch. Sit in on a meeting without commenting. Read three months of project approvals (if available). Notice which requests move quickly and which stall for reasons nobody names out loud.

Put what you were told and what you observed side by side against the official documents: org charts, strategic plans, process map, SOPs. Anywhere they diverge are your list of gaps.

From there, sort each gap by type:

• Type A, an outdated map: the document is old and people are already doing the right thing. The fix is updating the paperwork.
• Type B, a drifted territory: the plan is still sound, and behavior has moved away from it, often for reasons that deserve a real look that often have to do with organizational culture. The fix is a conversation about whether to update the plan or bring behavior back in line.
• Type C, both at once: the map is outdated and the territory has drifted in its own direction. This one takes the most care, since two things need fixing rather than one.

Last, prioritize. Rank your list by what is costing the organization the most right now. It’s tempting to order it by what is easiest to fix first, but doing that way can have some costly and unexpected consequences à la ye’ ole’ Rube Goldberg machine. Some gaps can wait a quarter. A few need attention this month.

This is careful work that rewards patience over speed. If you want a structured way to work through it, I’m available to work with your team to map and address your organizational drift through my Narrative Mapping work or, if you’d like to go it alone I built a self-paced Toolkit and a live two-part webinar series that walk through this exact process, worksheets included. I would love to help you find and align the gaps between your policies and procedures and your organization’s daily grind.