In a world of non-stop change, financial managers agree that “alignment” is the most difficult challenge faced by most organizations.  Through time, more equal access to all other resources has grown: materials, suppliers, facilities, financing, technology, products, entrepreneurs and human resources.

 Organizations have used a variety of methods to create alignment.  Military command and control, strategic planning, portfolio management and process management in various forms have been tried with mixed success.  In some static environments with less technology change, less competition and simpler processes, these approaches have worked well.  In the highly specialized, global, decentralized, changing, virtual world of today, many organizations have concluded that alignment can best be achieved through defining, shaping and reinforcing their corporate culture.

 A critical element in any corporate culture initiative is helping all staff members to have the self-awareness and other-awareness to manage their relations with others.

 My favorite introduction to self-awareness and paradigms is through the fable of “The Blind Men and the Elephant”.

 http://www.peacecorps.gov/wws/stories/stories.cfm?psid=110

 Individual blind men conclude on the basis of their personal investigations that an elephant “IS” a wall, a snake, a spear, a cow, a magic carpet or an old rope.  The moral is that an elephant is more than the sum of his parts.  Attempts to generalize from limited information or paradigms are doomed to failure.  The blind men can see neither the forest, nor the trees.  Many individuals have these same blind spots.  They are unable to see the big picture and they passionately hold onto their world view because they are not aware of the possibility of another approach.

 To help staff members with the personal growth needed to overcome this limitation, many organizations implement a personality styles program.  Myers-Briggs, DISC, Predictive Index, Gallup Strengthsfinders and a dozen others can be used to help all staff understand a few key results and begin to practice seeing the world from multiple perspectives, even forming the habit of expecting to employ multiple perspectives.

 These programs deliver 5 main lessons.  Individuals tend to behave in their own patterns or styles, which can be described.  No pattern is inherently better or worse, except as a means for completing certain responsibilities.  Personal styles make individuals especially effective in functions (accounting, sales, design, or engineering) that match their natural talents.  Individuals are not limited by their styles, but these habitual behaviors are more natural and using other complementary styles requires significant effort.  Since organizations have many functions and individuals with different styles, it is necessary for all staff members to be aware of their styles, recognize the styles of others and learn how to flex their styles to get along with others.

 Since these programs have been implemented many times in most firms across 30 years, one might expect that self-awareness would be the norm, followed by cross-functional cooperation and sophisticated used of different perspectives.  Unfortunately, many of these programs have not delivered the desired results.

 For personality styles programs to build self-awareness, complement corporate cultures, align teams and deliver results, firms need to invest more resources.

 1)      All managers, beginning at the top, need deep training, evaluation and feedback.

2)      All staff require experiential learning, examples, reinforcement and consistent guidance.

3)      Firms need to use the tool everywhere to create the skills, habits and expectations: training, hiring, promotions, cross-teams, planning, performance evaluations, etc.

4)      Firms need to break down the functional barriers and require a mix of styles in each function, job rotation for managers and cross-team experience for everyone.

5)      The personality styles tool, profiles and understanding needs to become part of the culture.  This is the language we use.  These are the stories we use.  These are the executives we use as examples of this style.

 Invest the resources to create a real asset for your organization.  Half of an investment produces little return.