The Clifton Review
The Clifton Review is a tri-weekly column that examines the question of the Clifton project along with the evolution of the war between two billionaires. We covered the start of this war with articles describing the battle over easement rights, the mysterious burning of a home, the blocks to rebuilding, and countless questionable court filings.
While the 2018 series salutes fashion mogul Peter Nygård’s Golden Jubilee detailing his rags to riches story, his incredible business success over these past fifty years and an inside look at how he did it, The Clifton Review will also continue to address current affairs as they relate to the good of The Bahamas.
Boosting The Success of Your Business
By P.J. Malone
How can business owners ensure their business is firing on all cylinders? As we’ve been discussing, it involves focusing on the idea of organizational alignment.
To understand Effective organizational alignment, consider the all or none principle. All of the organizational parts have to be effective in working with each other or none will be effective, thereby inhibiting efforts to achieve higher levels of success.
There is a lot that can be gleaned from fashion mogul Peter Nygard’s success by reviewing his business strategies in detail—in this instance, looking at his efforts at organizational alignment.
For Peter Nygard, it wasn’t a decision of ‘I’m going to work on organizational alignment’. Organizational alignment was what he achieved as a result of being a perfectionist.
While organizational alignment generally speaks to aligning the goals that are going to be set in a company with the policies, practices and behaviors mandated for achieving it, Nygard’s organizational alignment takes it to another level.
It represents an almost 360-degree alignment—he did not just align the organization overall; his organizational alignment efforts were performed in detail on several layers. In fact, it is clear that his alignments are multileveled on macro and micro scales.
Nygard focused his alignment efforts on the following areas:
- Organizational Structure & Processes Alignments
- Technological Alignments.
- Product Development & Delivery Alignments
We will review each of these areas to see exactly what he did to ensure that his organization was firing on all cylinders.
When it came to the organization’s structure and processes, Nygard did several things:
On a macro level, he ensured that cross-sectional teams were formed so that those departments impacting each other’s results were communicating and working together to ensure overall effectiveness.
On a micro level, with the internal communications system, Nygard ensured consistency not just in general use but in email language and formatting designed to save time and engender cooperation among associates.
Nygard understood the link between levels of comfort, motivation, and work output. In his work space design, he always sought to find ways to ensure that employees were comfortable enough in their work environment and their workspace design to produce the highest output. Additionally, incentives were provided to motivate workers to increase output.
On both the macro and micro levels, the ultimate strategy to create organizational alignment is the organization’s intense focus on continuous improvement.
The annual summits (NYGARD strategic planning sessions held department by department) ensure a recurring detailed look at their structure, processes and areas for improvement within each department each year. Such an in-depth review and strategic planning, department by department, allow for continual focus on aligning organizational processes and systems on a micro level with business goals and objectives.
Engaging in strategic planning can never hurt, unless you take your strategies, place them on a shelf, and never use them. Nygard’s approach towards his organizational structure and processes can definitely be used to help any business increase their levels of success.
We’ll continue to cover his alignment strategies in upcoming articles.
