Introduction
Strategic project management is a management tool that organisations use to formulate their objectives, organise human resources and other wherewithal, and enhance their operations to ensure that the management team and the employees work towards their main goals. It is through strategic management that an organisation can effectively assess and evaluate its operations in relation to its objectives (Brady, Davies & Gann 2005, p. 361).
Strategic project management is an organised plan, which determines how an organisation operates in the industry while focusing on future plans and any expected changes all at once (Brady, Davies & Gann 2005, p. 362). Within the modern business world, a project is only successful when its objectives align with organisational strategy.
There are a couple of benefits, limitations, as well as inherent problems that organisations face in their effort to align their projects to their organisational strategy. This paper is going to address some of the ways by which organisations can align their project objectives with their organisational strategies. It will then outline the benefits, limitations and inherent problems that such alignment brings to the organisations.
How to Align Project Objectives with Organisational Strategy
The alignment of project objectives with organisational strategy simply refers to making sure that business management strategy conforms to the culture of the business (Cover & Salle 2005, p. 354).
The alignment process requires an organisation to make necessary adjustments on its vision and objectives to reflect on its culture, leadership goals, and the abilities of its staff and other employees. In essence, organisational strategic alignment ensures that organisations maintain a proper balance between their operations and expenses as well as their abilities to meet them (Cover & Salle 2005, p. 356).
There are several measures that a company needs to put in place to ensure that its objectives are aligned with its organisational strategy. Firstly, a company should build up a flexible and a supportive culture that can easily accommodate its management strategy. A strategic alignment in this case is a state where the company’s management system is in line with its processes and goals (Covin & Slevin 2006, p. 77).
It is simple for companies to develop cultures that support their strategies. What they need to do to make it happen is to ensure that the culture they develop is accommodative to new strategies (Covin & Slevin 2006, p. 78).
There are cases in which the managers and employees of a company lack the skills to develop a culture that is flexible enough to accommodate changes that may occur in the internal or external environment of their company. In such cases, the company should regularly organise for managerial training in which its managers and employees are trained on relevant skills (Crawford 2005, p. 9).
Unless managers and employees are well trained on their strategic skills, the organisation stands a high chance of collapsing as a result of the inflexibility of its culture. Well trained employees and managers will always be supportive to the company’s strategic alignment (Crawford 2005, p. 10).
A company may also be expected to adjust on the factors that influence its organisational strategic alignment. Some of the factors that are known to affect the alignment process include: transparency, efficiency in communication, trust, and decision making procedures within the organisation.
In addition to enhancing such factors in its employees and staff members, an organisation should also understand its customers deeply to ensure that they are satisfied with the organisation’s culture and goals. A company can assess the customer’s satisfaction by carrying out frequent market research (Wernerfelt 2007, p. 171).
Enhancement and promotion of both individual effort and team work is another way by which a company can create a better ground for the alignment of its project objects with its strategy. The individual effort and teamwork concepts can be promoted by freely allowing individuals and teams to have maximum autonomy in their field of operations within the company.
Individual duties and teamwork help to develop trust in employees (Mahoney & Pandian 2006, p. 367). Once the employees have the feeling that they are trusted in the company, they are highly likely to demonstrate maximum loyalty to the company.
However, the loyalty and trust can never come by themselves; the company has to offer transparency and relevant information to the employees to help them complete their duties as required (Mahoney & Pandian 2006, p. 368).
Lastly, the way an organisation designs culture determines how easily it can align its objectives with its strategies. Most businesses prosper as a result of a well formulated culture, which allows for the necessary adjustments to be made in the companies. The culture of a company is simply consisted of the ways in which it goes about its business.
The culture of a company forms the best part of how the company is managed (Nogeste & Walker 2008, p. 282). If a company’s culture is made flexible enough to reflect the interests of the employees, stakeholders and other customers, it becomes very accommodative to any kind of alignment.
Since it is culture that determines the output of a company, it can also help in aligning the project’s objectives with the management strategy of the company (Nogeste & Walker 2008, p. 283).
Benefits of Aligning Project Objectives with Organisational Strategy
There are many benefits that organisations enjoy when they align their project objectives with their organisational strategy. One of such benefits is increased and enhanced operating margins; the alignment is known to encourage employees to become more engaged in the organisation’s daily operations (Cicmil, Williams, Thomas & Hodgson 2006 p. 676).
This comes as a result of the improvement that employees and the staff members undergo in terms of the way they understand their duties and the way they relate to one another within the company (Cicmil, Williams, Thomas & Hodgson 2006 p. 677).
When employees are involved wholly in the company’s operations and decision making processes, they develop a sense of belonging. This motivates employees to find ways through which they can directly contribute to the overall performance of the company.
The overall performance and prosperity of any organisation directly depend on the productivity of the employees who carry out most of the work in every organisation (Sanchez, Robert, Bourgault & Pellerin 2009, p. 17).
Secondly, the alignment of project objectives and organisational strategy assists companies to increase the turnover of their employees and to reduce the rate of absenteeism among the workers.
The main aim of managers is to encourage their employees to fully become engaged with their duties within the organisation; such engagement is known to influence the performance of a company. This can only be achieved by enhancing job satisfaction among the company’s employees (Sanchez, Robert, Bourgault & Pellerin 2009, p. 17).
The way employees get involved in their work can be easily influenced by the proper alignment of organisational strategy with the objectives of the company. The alignment assists the top management of the company to create an environment in which the employees develop the feeling of ownership towards the business (Sense 2008, p. 35).
When employees feel that they are part of the company just like other stakeholders, they work hard to improve its status and performance. In addition, the alignment can also result in the establishment of an employee motivation system in which they are rewarded for their individual and teamwork inputs (Sense 2008, p. 36).
Consequently, properly formulating and aligning organisational strategy with the organisation’s objectives greatly motivates employees, who in turn improve the company’s overall output (Sense 2008, p. 37).
Thirdly, the alignment helps companies to formulate and implement their objectives faster. The alignment promotes the formulation of visible, flexible and tighter objectives, which are easy to execute. Since, the alignment brings about easier identification of human resources and other wherewithal by the management team, the unification of such factors can be done faster to enable efficient production.
When managers succeed in uniting the sources of production, the chances of employees duplicating the efforts are minimised. This enhances employees’ efficiency, which leads to an increased overall performance of the company (Schemid & Adams 2008, p. 63).
The alignment of organisational objectives with the organisation’s objectives leads to more effective goal setting strategies, which in turn lead to timely completion of the goals. The alignment ensures that the company’s goals conform to its organisational strategy; as a result, the alignment practice automatically results in goals that are flexible and which the employees can easily accomplish (Schemid & Adams 2008, p. 66).
Lastly, the alignment of the two aspects of management eases and improves the organisation’s chances of obtaining more useful data about its products. Such kind of data can help a company to improve its products to suit the preferences of its target market (Bourne & Walker 2008, p. 127).
An organisational strategy that is properly aligned with the organisation’s objectives results in a good working relationship between the company and its customers, who in most cases are its stakeholders. A company that succeeds in building a good working relationship with its stakeholders as a result of strong alignment is likely to gain powerful insight and dominate the industry in which it operates (Bourne & Walker 2008, p. 129).
Limitations of the Alignment
There are several difficulties that most organisations face in their effort to align their project objectives with their organisational strategy; one of such limitations is the difficulty involved in formulating a flexible and supportive culture of the company.
Some companies are known to deal in very many business activities that require a large number of employees. In such cases, it becomes difficult for the organisation to develop a culture that can accommodate all its operations and take the employees’ interests into account (Tomas & Ralf 2007, p. 52).
Secondly, some organisations do not have enough resources, which can be used to develop smart objectives and goals that conform to organisational strategy of the companies. Just like in any other managerial work, the alignment of project objectives of an organisation with its organisational strategy requires time and other resources such as qualified personnel.
These organisations do not have enough financial resources to hire the services of the business experts to help them in the alignment procedures (Thomas & Mulley 2007, p. 78).
The problem of lack of funds also makes it difficult for some of the organisations to organise for training programs for their managers and employees.
The training can be used to impart necessary skills into the managers and employees to help them develop project objectives that conform to the organisation’s strategies of their respective companies. As a result, such companies are never able to formulate appropriate project objectives, which reflect on their organisational strategies (Tomas & Ralf 2007, p. 55).
Lastly, lack of other factors such as transparency, team work, communication, and trust among employees and managers of a company also hinders such companies from developing suitable project objectives that conform to their organisational strategies.
Without trust, proper communication, transparency, and teamwork spirit, managers and employees can never participate actively in the development of project objectives, which should conform to the organisation’s strategy of their company (Wernerfelt 2007, p. 172).
This implies that development of reflective project objectives and the success of aligning such objectives with organisational strategy majorly depend on the willingness and readiness of all the participants (Wernerfelt 2007, p. 173).
Inherent Problems Associated with the Alignment
Although the alignment of project objections of an organisation with its organisational strategy is intended to only bring benefits to the organisation’s management, there are a few inherent problems that may come with the alignment (Atkinson, Crawford & Ward 2006, p. 688).
The alignment may be so rigid that making adjustments to the existing objectives concerning future changes may become a difficult task for the management of the organisation.
The alignment requires the project objectives to be formulated in such a way that they consider the company’s strategic management. As a result, such objectives can only be altered when the organisation’s strategy of the company is changed (Atkinson, Crawford & Ward 2006, p. 689).
The alignment may also make an organisation spend more time and resources in trying to achieve it. Since the external and internal environments of each organisation keep changing every time, it implies that such a company would have to adjust its goals and strategies to be conventional in relation to the changes (Godfrey & Hill 2007, p. 521).
Once organisational strategy of a company is altered, its project objectives also have to be adjusted. To make alterations to its objectives, the organisation could end up incurring additional expenses; this is because it sometimes has to hire business experts to execute the changes (Godfrey & Hill 2007, p. 523).
Conclusion
The alignment of project objectives with organisational strategy simply refers to making sure that business management strategy conforms to the culture of the business. For that reason, a project is only successful when the project objectives align with organisational strategy.
Some of the benefits of such alignment include: proper utilisation of available resources, improvement of employees’ efficiency, and increase in the overall performance of an organisation. The only serious limitation to aligning the objectives and strategy is lack of appropriate skills. Despite the benefits that come with the alignment, it may at times result in increased spending by the organisation.
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