The Importance of Leadership Alignment

While most change initiatives are led by one area of an organization, they typically require support from staff in several different areas to be successful. To create such diverse support, the leaders of the necessary supporting organizational areas must agree on the change initiative’s level of importance.

27 March 2024

A single area or department can rarely bring about significant organizational change on its own. In order to succeed, most change initiatives require support from multiple organizational areas. For different organizational areas to effectively work together on a change initiative, the members of each area must similarly prioritize the initiative. And in order for the members of each organizational area to prioritize a change initiative in a similar way, their leaders need to be aligned on the initiative’s importance.

Most change initiatives are led by a single area or department of an organization. For example, technology projects are often led by the IT department, quality improvement projects are often led by the quality department, and rebranding projects are often led by the marketing department. However, just because a specific department is leading a change initiative, it does not mean the project should not be a priority for other departments in the organization.

While one area of an organization typically leads a change initiative, the success of most change initiatives depends on the support of multiple other areas of the organization. For example, while the IT department often leads technology-based initiatives, such initiatives need support from many different areas of the organization to be successful. Members of operational departments will often be required to help the IT department define what a new technology needs to do and test it before going live to ensure it actually does these things. Members of the communication department will often need to help get the word out about the change initiative and assist the IT department in answering questions from stakeholders during the project. The organization’s training department will often need to help prepare staff to start using the new technology. And human resources staff might be needed to help revise employee job descriptions to include changes to responsibilities associated with using and maintaining the technology.

To ensure critical organizational change initiatives progress in a timely and efficient manner, all organizational areas supporting the initiative must prioritize it at the same level. For this to happen, the leaders of all of these areas need to be aware of the initiative and aligned on its level of importance.

In some instances, a single meeting is all that is required to achieve the alignment of all appropriate organizational leaders on the prioritization of a change initiative. In other cases, however, more work might be needed. It is important to remember that the leaders of an organization are human beings just like all of the organization’s other employees. Therefore they are subject to the same resistance to change as all other employees. While it might take some time and change management to gain all of an organization’s leaders’ support for a project, this is time and effort well spent. For most change initiatives cannot succeed without the support of diverse members of an organization’s staff, and this support cannot be achieved without the support of these staff members’ leaders.

It is important to note that gaining the support of an organization’s leaders for a change initiative is often not a one-time activity. It is often necessary to remind an organization’s leadership of the importance of a change initiative several times during its execution. Most organizational leaders have a lot on their plates, and it can be hard for them to remember everything happening in their organization. It is essential therefore to occasionally revisit an ongoing change initiative with organizational leaders and work to reinforce their continued support. Perhaps paradoxically, this can be especially important for change initiatives that are running smoothly. Organizational activities that are not encountering problems are often the ones leaders forget about first.

Most organizational change initiatives require support from several different organizational areas to succeed. Such support requires the leaders of these areas to be aligned on the initiative’s level of importance. Sometimes achieving this alignment is easy. Other times it can be difficult and require a significant change management effort. Either way, it is important to gain the support of all appropriate organizational leaders before going too far down the road of executing a significant organizational change initiative. It is also important to remember that such support might decrease as an initiative progresses. Therefore, it is often necessary to regularly revisit and reinforce leadership’s support for an initiative during its execution.