Success Ambiguity
If you asked five people on your team what 'success' looks like this quarter, you would get six answers.
Ask five people on your team what “success” looks like this quarter. You will get six answers.
Patrick Lencioni, in The Advantage, argued that the single greatest advantage any company can achieve is organisational health, and the first requirement is a leadership team that is aligned on what they are trying to achieve. Not aligned on strategy. Aligned on definition.
When success is ambiguous, everyone optimises for their own interpretation. Engineering ships features. Sales closes deals. Marketing builds awareness. All moving. None converging.
The fix is not more goals. It is fewer, clearer ones. One definition. Shared publicly. Revisited weekly.
Alignment is not agreement. It is shared definition.