What happens when you realise your path is entrepreneurship rather than employment? Lindsay takes up the challenge and shares an account of her journey as it unfolds…

In the last post I gave you a link to my first Mirror Mirror webinar.  Whether you watched it or not, I can tell you that it went well, I got a reasonably-sized audience, some compliments afterwards – and in it, I must have mentioned ‘alignment’ around 200 times.

In a blog a few weeks earlier, I talked about the mountain range. How just when you think you’ve reached the top to land something concrete, (like pricing, positioning, strategy) you see another range in sight – a better way forwards: things keep morphing and changing.  And that’s more than ok because at least you can see where you need to go next to suceed.

Just over the past week, it seems like the stars lined up, and Mirror Mirror made the easiest ascent up an important new mountain range. The fog is clearing!

Right after the webinar, I was talking with an agency about their running Mirror Mirror with their team in London, so they could experience it with a view to providing it to their clients.  I was on a call with three leaders of the London team. I felt hesitation.

“So, don’t we need to do more preparation? I mean, agree on the purpose?  Because, what are we aligning them to?”

I replied with the stock answer:

“It’s all about having your team be more prepared to achieve their goals.  By asking them open questions about how your team perceives their situation, alignment gaps emerge that you may not have known about. By addressing those your team is better able to implement your strategy.”

We concluded the call. They’re going to look at it further. I felt ok.

But afterwards – I realised that was a great question.  WHAT ARE WE ALIGNING THEM TO?

It typified the feedback I’ve been getting in different ways and spoke directly to the questions that had been hanging over our heads since day one:

• What specific business need does this address?
• Who is our target market?
• How can we best present this offer?

Then it hit me. ‘Alignment’ is confusing the hell out of everyone.  I’ve been clawing my way uphill trying to educate people on ‘what is social alignment’ for yonks (latest article here) – but I don’t need to!  Mirror Mirror is a structured communication process for team effectiveness.  When organizations are having problems leveraging their people to implement the strategy and pick up on their thoughts and ideas to influence tomorrow’s strategy – Mirror Mirror is the solution.

The target audience is therefore, people people: HR, Comms, OE.  They can open the doors to operational leaders who need to solve that problem.

At last!  Answers to these questions that have been hanging around for so long.  Might not sound like much but this ship is now pointing in quite a different, clearer direction for me.

Alignment is out.

Team effectiveness is in.

The problem we address is issues with implementing strategy through people.

And here’s the fab bit: we have versions of Mirror Mirror to address specific situational challenges with strategy implementation at hand (full picture and QuickScan versions):

1. Connecting virtual teams – when you need virtual team members to understand each other and work together more effectively
2. Onboarding teams / cross-functional teams – when you need new staff, leaders, or project teams to familiarise and hit the ground running quickly and effectively
3. M&A team integrations – when you need integrating teams to make the successful transition to becoming one team so they can deliver effectively
4. Embracing agile / change – when you need teams to adapt to new situations, take ownership and be effective – as well as drive success in the future
5. Strategy communications – when you need to ensure strategy messages are translated into what it means for people at the individual level so they can make effective decisions and take effective actions
6. Innovation– when you need your people to appreciate broader views, collaborate, and think differently to come up with better ways forward.

Wow.

Mirror Mirror – the process that accelerates team alignment for improved performance and innovation. By enabling a better shared current reality between people with a shared goal, they make better, faster progress:  www.mirrormirrorhub.com

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