Sherpa Alliance

Yes!  Both are key.  While they are very inter-related, they are also different.  Buy-in is more cultural and about commitment and cooperation.  Alignment is more directional and about things pointing in the same direction and meshing well.  No amount of one makes up for a lack of the other. 

Execution Excellence is an integrated system and a discipline, with many other moving parts in addition to buy-in and alignment, which have to be operating in unison.  When they are, we get traction.  When they aren’t we get wheel spin (Reducing Wheel$pin & Increasing Tra¢tion, for cents on the dollar).

The key is to assess priority opportunities for improvement (Journey-Judgment Opportunity Assessment), which will unlock the system’s ability to breakthrough to the next level of capability and capacity to execute, with the benefits to organizational agility.

I once merged two sister companies across the street from one another, where I was the President of one and would become the President of the merged entity with the other President becoming my COO.  I stood my ground with the parent corporation that we weren’t merging for cost-cutting purposes (and there would be no lay-offs) and, rather, we were merging to liberate spare production capacity, engineering capability and management bandwidth as the first step on a new breakthrough journey.  I faced a complex challenge of alignment (merging the two companies’, processes, products, people and cultures into an integrated and aligned team) and buy-in (to the trials, tribulations and triumphs of the breakthrough journey we were setting out on) with all the change management/leadership challenges that entailed.