Leadership: Aligning Behavior with Mission, Vision, and Values - Article Example

Logan says a tribe will attempt to maximize each person’s contribution to the organization as long as they all stay together like iron filings and focus on the organization’s core values.

It is the role and responsibility of leaders in an organization to ensure that their employees are aligned toward sharing a common desire so that their efforts can be synchronized to jointly achieve goals. Alignment by Kaplan and Norton (2006) says that corporations will be more productive if the leadership realizes that the whole is more valuable than the total sum of its differentiated parts.

George, Kaplan, and Logan both agree that for effective operations in any organizational structure, employees need to work together with a shared mission and vision that should also be in sync with that of the organization so that the organization’s goals can be realized. Without such alignment, workers’ efforts will be haphazardly distributed so that no common goal can be achieved.

Body/ Critique.

            I do agree with the three scholars on their idea about alignment. it is much easier to work with a whole team of employees whose actions, passions, ideas, goals, and agenda are all in sync with the organization’s mission, vision, and core values. This would be the perfect situation for any employee and leader and for the organization to thrive into maximum profitability.

            What I, however, find in all the arguments above is a normative argument of how an ideal situation for an organization would be. In a highly differentiated society with variance in generations, sex, race, socio-political-economic socialization, and liberalism in personal preferences, it is almost impossible to align employees to comply fully with an organization’s mission and vision.

            Leaders and employers in any organization would agree with this as an ideal situation that is so hard to come by. What leaders and employers need to do is put in measures that will ensure cooperation on the part of the employees in working toward achieving the organization's goals. These measures include punishment and rewards for compliance or non-compliance. This is more of an authoritative approach rather than a liberal one as it will force compliance on employees who would otherwise not comply. Management by Montana and Bruce (2008) gives an example of employees working on a project that has poor leadership and where decisions are not easily arrived at because every employee wants things done in his way. Such a project may never come to completion due to the inability to agree or waiting upon others to buy an idea.

Lifestyle and Transformational Leadership Style by Frey and the rest (2009) that although many view this approach as not suitable for maximizing employees’ performance, it becomes the best in achieving short-term goals and objectives. With proper strategizing, the organization can then trim off those employees that are constantly non-compliant so that in the long term, all employees can align with the organization’s objectives. This approach gives the organization time to get better employees, but in the meantime, it ensures that even those who are non-compliant perform the best for the organization under strict observation. This way, the organization does not lose time in waiting for all employees to become aligned at their own pace.