Your company achieves Vertical Alignment when you have a clear business strategy that is well understood by everyone in the company, regardless of title or role, and your employees understand their role in achieving organizational goals. Vertical alignment unleashes the "people power" of your team by engaging your employees in the vision, mission, purpose and strategy of your firm.
"Vertical alignment is about rapid deployment of business strategy that is manifested in the actions of people at work."1 This is not possible unless the people who will ultimately be charged with executing the strategy have had a say in the formation of your plan. For this reason, great leaders involve frontline employees and middle managers, those with first hand knowledge of customer experience and those who have a clear view of the strengths and weaknesses of your company.
1 George Labovitz and Victor Rosansky, The Power of Alignment: How Great Companies Stay Centered and Accomplish Extraordinary Things (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997):26
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