Alignment! Alignment!

Alignment! Alignment!

So what does Alignment mean for a Product Manager/Designer?

I can’t stress more on alignment & communication soft skills for this role. If you hear it from experts, they will say :

"Communication or Alignment is 60% of you your job"

Are you lately having the never-ending meetings with your team with no actionable outcomes?

Are your cross-functional teams producing no sync outputs?

Are your teams doing multiple iterations & yet no proximity to the final goal?

If the answer is yes to all these questions. maybe it is time to take a step back & realign your team to a common goal.
Maybe you need to revisit your methods & not to run in the same fashion.

As a Product Designer/Manager it becomes vital that everyone across the cross-functional teams or within your team are aligned to common goal or vision.

Lack of alignment leads to chaos, conflicts, never-ending discussions & eventually in increased timelines costs and poor customer experince, having a diverse set of directions will lead nowhere.

One might argue that having diversity is good to have as it gives more room to innovation & better results?

Of course, diversity is great, But only if they are aligned to a common goal. This means even if teams take a different route but end at the common goal.

Ok, let me explain to you with my “Toe-in, Toe-Out theory”

In Toe -Out structure even if your toes are close to each other but fingers are aligned in different directions. What does that translate to us? It means no matter how closely we work with our teams if we are not aligned to common gaol results will always be different.

In Toe-In structure even though toes are apart from each other but fingers are aligned in a common direction. What does that translate to us? It means no matter how apart your team’s work or diverse routes they take results will lead to a common goal. That itself evangelizes the diversity.

Note: Though it is ideal that teams work more closely with each other & aligned to a common goal.

So, when you see all these red flags, take a moment & revisit your methods, use proper communication channels & provisions to re-align your team. Things will start falling into its place.

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Written By - Chameli Kuduva, Founder - SaaS Insider