Workshop 2: Fit to Compete: Developing Strategic Alignment in Organizations 2004

In a dynamic and unforgiving competitive arena, companies will increasingly win by creating an organization that has both the alignment and capabilities for superior execution of current strategies, as well as the capacity to reinvent the business in response to emerging opportunities and threats.

This workshop will present an integrated approach to building organizational capability as a source of advantageorganizational Fitness. The approach builds on the disciplines of strategic management, organizational design, organizational behavior, human resources management, and organizational change and developmentdeveloped and refined through two decades of action research with leading corporations.

The workshop will introduce and provide a set of immediately applicable principles, tools, and frameworks that will help participants:

Develop a compelling statement of business and organizational direction
Deepen the understanding and commitment of senior management and the larger organization to this direction
Create an honest organizational conversation to assess the organizations current effectiveness based on the unvarnished truth
Diagnose the businesses as a total system, including identifying the root causes of critical barriers to effectiveness and their impact on business performance
Systematically work through the implications of these barriers for organizational realignment and redesign, and develop a plan for change

The workshop will be of interest to any practitioner who seeks to enhance his/her ability to identify both the organizational changes required to improve organizational performance, as well as how to build broad commitment and capabilities to effectively implement change.

Michael Beer is chairman of the Center for Organizational Fitness and the Cahners-Rabb Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus, at the Harvard Business School. He is a distinguished educator, author, and consultant in the areas of organization effectiveness and change, leadership, and human resource management. Mike has authored or coauthored numerous book chapters, articles, and seven books, including Managing Human Assets and The Critical Path to Corporate Renewal, for which he won the Johnson, Smith & Knisely Award for the best book on executive leadership. His consulting experience spans the manufacturing, financial services, consumer, information technology, and pharmaceutical/medical technology industries. He joined the faculty at Harvard in 1975, after serving as director of Organizational Research & Development at Corning, Inc. He holds a PhD in organizational psychology and business from Ohio State University.

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