What is One-Team Alignment and Why Does it Matter

While Eastern culture places emphasis on teamwork and culture, Western culture values individualism. Employees are encouraged to be self-reliant, make decisions and be held accountable for their actions. And this isn’t a bad thing: It’s not about collectivism versus individualism. But when it comes to solving problems, we can learn from Eastern companies’ ways of collective thinking and changing as one–what we call one-team alignment.

According to LSA Global research, companies with high organizational alignment grow revenue 58% faster and are 72% more profitable. One-team alignment happens when employees, departments and management work as a whole toward a common goal or mission.

Why Solving Problems by Department Doesn’t Work

In the West, companies tend to be very hierarchical in departments. Each department deals with its own problems, and consequently, we create solutions and make changes by department.

This is ineffective and inefficient. Here’s why:

First of all, you want to solve problems at their core. You have to review the timeline of a problem, not just what is happening at the present moment. All problems might only be due to one cause, so you don’t want to end up having eight teams working on the same problem…