Why alignd?

We believe that aligned teams move the world forward.

Is that a revolutionary concept? Perhaps not. But in the warp speed of modern business, organizations (and the people who power them) find themselves busier than ever yet somehow less productive, less connected to each other and to the mission.

We say “our products combine ageless wisdom and modern technologies in service of how progress really happens.” But...what does that mean?

The world has changed — and continues to change daily — but there are certain truisms that grow “truer” over time.

Where focus goes energy flows.

Focus fuel momentum. It channels our effort and gives it direction. In an unpredictable world, we control the controllable. And the best place to start is with where you choose to put your focus, because that is where energy will flow.

The main thing is that we keep
the main thing the main thing.

This is one of our favorites. It’s so obvious in its repetitive and resplendent simplicity. It speaks to the need to think strategically - not everything can be the most important thing. It’s easy to feel busy, as jobs pile up quickly. But keeping “the main thing the main thing” allows us to tie our actions to purpose, feel grounded and see meaning in the work we do.

If you want to go fast, go alone.
If you want to go far, go together.

Well, yes, but we think it’s possible to go fast and far together. But it requires radical transparency, real-time awareness of inter-dependents. Something General Stanley McChrystal calls the power of “ shared consciousness .”

There’s no ‘i’ in team.

This is an oldie but a goldie. And, of course, any organization relies on dynamic teamwork, where the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts. But collaboration requires coordination. As one of our founding customers told us, “the first step of coordination is awareness.” To be good and effective teammates, people need to know what others are working on. They need to see and feel that sense of interdependence.

A journey of a thousand miles
begins with a single step.

Maybe the age-iest of the “ageless wisdom,” Lao Tzu’s proverb is just as relevant in the 21st century as it was 27 centuries ago. Knowing where we want to go is part of the equation - taking intentional steps daily enable us to make methodical progress but also pivot to destinations we couldn’t have imagined.

So...ageless wisdom provides the inspiration for our methodology — progress really happens by enabling and empowering the Three C’s: Clarity (a shared understanding of your purpose), Coordination (a daily and weekly discipline to focus your actions towards those goals and expose your teammates to that focus) and Connection (working together to unlock and leverage the strengths and past experiences that exist within your team).

Alignd is a digital manifestation of an open and transparent physical working environment. It’s a mechanism for interconnection for an organization’s most value asset...it’s people. It is designed to make it simple to share a common set of goals, focus and coordinate actions to those goals and unlock a team’s latent skills and passions.

This isn’t ageless wisdom - call it “emerging wisdom” - but we do believe it’s critical to “align to enable autonomy.” Autonomy is something all people strive to have and all good companies endeavor to provide. But autonomy without alignment is chaos. As many organizations grow, they see the chaos growing and often compensate with excessively rigid structure. This can manifest in a number of ways:

• An overly controlling senior and middle management involved in minor decisions.
• Too many cross-functional team meetings aimed at reaching consensus on and disseminating operational approaches.
• Process and procedure that reduces likelihood of errors but slows everyone down and…let’s be honest, saps people of energy and their humanity.

We created Alignd to address these challenges. To provide: Shared context. A common understanding of the purpose and iterative goals. High asynchronous awareness of what people are doing (especially in and around your immediate sphere of influence). Discipline to set daily and weekly intentions that connect directly to strategy. Connecting the talents and passions that exist within the organization to where they’ll return the greatest amount of good for the business and its people.

This is what we mean when we say “aligned teams move the world forward.” We believe that. And we’re excited to help your team move the world forward in the way that only you can.