Businesses of all sizes have many issues.  One of the most common I have found from speaking with thousands of businesses over the last five years is alignment of the senior team.

There is a huge difference between the importance and emphasis of creating a plan or strategy and the actual importance of executing that plan.  Simply put, many plan well, not many execute well.  There is a really good reason for this that once understood can lead to remarkable business results rather doing just ‘ok’.

If you ask a bunch of business executives to be honest, they will tell you that the senior team has some great talent – but not everyone is pulling in the same direction.  Many of the senior team are experts in their own right, which is good but the results produced and the profits generated are in direct proportion of senior team alignment.

Find a way to align your senior team and you’ve found a way to maximise your potential result.

So how do you do that? This is the all important question.  How do you get a bunch of highly-talented, professional and passionate people to work as an effective team?  How do you get this same bunch of people to stop acting like beautiful fireworks going off in all different directions, looking fantastic for a short while but then fizzing out?

You bring them all together following an overall vision and then have a system for cascading that vision down to all levels of the senior team so that everyone has a simple plan of what they need to do and what they need to focus on to align with the company vision.

I have designed The World’s Best One Page Action Plan,  a simple plan that fits on a single sheet of paper so there is no need to keep checking with  your detailed business plan when you’re in the throes of your business with loads more to do than you think you have time for.

The first stage is to look at how effective you are at present.  It is about being effective: not being efficient.  I have seen many business leaders and directors efficiently doing the wrong thing! Once we understand how effective we are at present, we’ll look at ways to become more effective.

The second stage is to identify any challenges that could be getting in the way of us being our best. We stage can be extremely enlightening.  It’s about cause not symptom.

Stage three is about the action plan process itself.  This is the basis for engaging your team, sharing where you want to get to and understanding the main objectives that you and your people should be focusing on most of the time.  The fact is that if you want to achieve more, you need to focus on less!!

Finally, stage four is how to use your action plan with your team on a weekly basis.  You would be most upset if your pilot on your next flight skipped the pre-flight routine.  It’s amazing how many high- performance people don’t have a pre-flight routine.  And the end of week routine is vital if you want to finish the week in a place of possibility.

In short, if you want to avoid the trap of having a great but non-aligned team, you really need to understand how this four-step system can enable you and your team to deliver the results you know deep down you should be.

Pete Wilkinson will be delivering a masterclass on November 21 at the Radisson Golden Sands. Tickets can be bought via academy@upyourlevel.com or 7944 1382.