A t the 2001 International Society for Performance Improvement (ISPI) International Conference, Geary Rummler and Don Tosti conducted an encore presentation on organizational alignment, calling for a revolution in the organizational mindset of human performance technology (HPT) practitioners. They forcefully made the case that performance consultants are too apt to tackle an organization's performance problems with their own favorite solutions, which unfortunately tend to address only part of the need. We should instead apply our technology to all the components of the organization.Organizational alignment is a large-scale, whole-system organizational transformation. It is not tinkering with one element of the organization, say, its performance appraisal system, or trying to achieve change with a single HPT technology such as training or measurement. Organizational alignment implies changing many components of the organizational system at once, or in careful succession, to achieve some big-time gains. Geary and Don see organizational alignment as important enough to warrant its own track at future ISPI conferences, and they set up a website for interested practitioners to share ideas.What has happened since the presentation? Not much. The website is inactive because, according to Don, "After an assessment, we decided [the website] was not the best way to communicate about alignment." Don and Geary have met three times with other ISPI leaders such as Danny Langdon, Roger Kaufman, Dale Brethower, Bob Carleton, and Claude Lineberry to move the concept of alignment forward, but as of now, there is no ISPI track for organizational alignment. Don and Geary can offer the invitations, but it is up to the rest of us to join up. If this is a revolution, where are the revolutionaries?
Nudging the RevolutionThis slow progress is disappointing, as my own experience squares with the proposition that organizational alignment, or some other word that connotes system harmony, is the proper direction for performance consultants who are serious about interventions that bring lasting value and far-reaching improvement. I would like to offer some points to help nudge the revolution along.
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