By. Scot Kersgaard

If you’ve ever been to a JVA training or participated in a JVA –led strategic planning session, the odds are you’ve given some thought to what your organization’s core values are, what your strategic vision is. You might even stand in front of the mirror once a month before going to work and practice your elevator speech.

You have it down cold, this vision thing.

That’s not enough.

In a 1996 article in the Harvard Business Review (Yes, I’m behind in my reading), Jim Collins and Jerry Porras make the point that if someone were to visit your office or operations they should be able to observe people working and know what your organizational vision is, what your core values are, what your goals are—without reading it or being told.

It is all, they say, about alignment. The success of your organization comes from the people doing the work being in alignment with the organizational mission. Well, of course the people are in alignment, but that isn’t enough either. The work they are doing needs to be in alignment.

Every employee, every job description, every volunteer needs to be in alignment with the organizational goals or even the best staff in the world will not get you where you want to go.

Not only that, but your best people will quit rather than work someplace where it isn’t clear what good they’re accomplishing.

It is true in business, and even more true in the nonprofit and public sectors that people want to be part of something that matters, and they have to know as well that the part they play matters.

When everyone understand the goals, and everyone understands their role in achieving the goals, and everyone can see that the work they do truly does contribute to reaching worthy goals, then you have alignment.

With that comes happiness.