Andy Bailey is the head of Petra Coach and Align software. His specialties include implementation of Rockefeller Habits and other business processes that drive results in any business setting. Andy’s passion is to assist business owners and entrepreneurs in building the foundation allowing them and their teams the ability to achieve their goals. In today’s episode, I discuss with Andy how to utilize Align for the purpose of alignment between the employees and business. Tune in to hear how Align can help organizations achieve their priorities.

The number one question most people have is “how do I know if my employees’ priorities align with the organization?” Align is a business project planning tool that allows working on your business instead of in your business. It is important for leaders to know what is going on throughout the entire company. The person in the front line needs to understand what they are doing everyday aligns with their enterprise's priorities, and when these two things match up, people will understand their role and make better decisions that align with their organization.

To ensure focus and alignment remain throughout the company, the business needs to have two crucial meetings, one which is called the daily huddle; no longer than 15 minutes max. These are based on small groups of staff members throughout the company and broken apart by function and departmental needs. This ensures all the team members are on the same page, and issues are identified and dealt with immediately. These huddles need to be in conjunction with the Core Weekly Priority meeting.

There needs to be an owner and a metric to priorities; you can’t cheat when you are using Align. You have to pick a due date; the system won’t let you choose a priority without a KPI and a definition.

Some of the key stumbling blocks; number one it’s easier for companies that are just starting out to use Align from the beginning, but it is harder for already established organizations to understand the importance needed because some see it as just another tool that they will have to implement.

The Pure Task Management Tool is under-appreciated mainly because businesses don’t have the knowledge necessary to utilize it. Most companies use emails as a task management tool, which is a horrible idea. This tool creates a project with due dates and instructions, assigns it to someone or a team, manages the re-distribution, and completions through trigger notification as well as dashboards. It is incredibly powerful and underutilized. The KPI becomes the task and as you check them off it shows progress on your priority.

The EMPS and Feed Box feature complement each other; one way to measure Employee Morale is by using a scoring methodology. It’s a single survey sent out monthly or quarterly where the staff members answer one question; score it a 0-10, and comment. This is assigned to a person that gathers the suggestions and information and will display it on the dashboard. The person in charge will monitor the score; whether it went up or down and give feedback on a report.

There are some exciting new features in the pipeline. Align is going through a code re-write which will allow iterating faster in the future. There is also a big reveal around the multi-language design.

Align can be used with a company of one to thousands. You can leverage the software to get focused and work on the necessary items and track goals.

Interview Links:

Petra Coaching

Align’s Website

More Resources: ScalingUpBusiness.com:  Learn about how growth coaching can help you and and your business see big results. Scaling Up Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Bill on YouTube: Short videos to keep you Scaling Up.

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Scaling Up is the best-selling book, by Verne Harnish and the team at Gazelles, on how the fastest growing companies succeed where so many others fail. My name is Bill Gallagher and I'm a certified Gazelles business coach. 

We help leadership teams to get the 4 Decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash right so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth success. Our 4 Decisions are all part of the Rockefeller Habits 2.0 (from the original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits).