The bigger your company, the worse your team alignment: How to fix it

Enterprise organizations, you've got a silent productivity killer in your midst. 🕵️

Instead of making you go through a full 'whodunnit' (because we know time is a precious entity), we're going to tell you who it is: it's team alignment.

As companies grow, communication gets more complex, strategic vision gets pulled in all different directions, and collaboration... I mean, what collaboration? This leads to siloed teams, misaligned goals, general inefficiency, and disappointing results.

Enterprise team misalignment: Some (real) harsh truths

Here's the thing: when your marketing team is broken, it will have a bigger impact on your performance as a marketing team, but also a business.

When there are cracks in your marketing team, there will be cracks in your customer experience. And when there are cracks in your customer experience? It's inconsistent, it's unappealing, and it's the absolute opposite of good marketing.

Here are some (sad) marketing statistics about the pains of team misalignment:

• 86% of executives cite lack of collaboration and communication as the main reason for workplace failures (Source)
• $1.5 million per year is the cost that some businesses can see from broken team alignment, whether it's caused by decreased productivity or wasted resources (Source)
• 47% of workers have experienced failed projects as a result of misalignment, with 46% being super frustrated about this fact (Source)

Why large companies struggle with team alignment

Let's discuss more about why large or enterprise companies struggle more with team alignment than the lil ones.

1. Communication gets complicated: As organizations grow, communication channels get more and more intricate. In smaller companies, you might have had a quick chat over your desk, but in larger companies it turns into multiple meetings, email chains, and cross-departmental approvals.
2. Departmental silos are killing the flow: With rigid departmental boundaries comes very split teams, creating information silos that prevent (that oh-so-ideal) holistic understanding of organizational goals.
3. Your martech stack is looking murky: When you've got siloed teams, multiple tools, various workflows, and a mish-mash of collaboration platforms, it's inevitable you'll struggle with a unified approach. Get more integrated with an integrated martech stack.

The ROI of team alignment

Investing in team alignment isn't just about your team feeling good (and creating great content)—it's about tangible business outcomes. With better team alignment, you'll see:

• Increased productivity
• Faster innovation cycles
• Improved employee satisfaction
• More efficient resource allocation
• Enhanced competitive advantage

A step-by-step to improving enterprise team alignment

1) Understand business goals and establish a unified vision

• Create clear, marketing organization-wide objectives for everyone to understand
• Ensure every team understands how their work contributes to broader goals
• Develop transparent communication channels—and stick to them!

2) Get more integrated with your marketing tech stack

• Choose platforms that integrate seamlessly across departments for that single source of truth
• Prioritize tools with comprehensive reporting and tracking capabilities (two birds, one stone, etc)
• Invest in training and enablement to make sure everyone is using the tools the same

3) Foster that sweet culture of transparency

• Schedule in regular cross-departmental meetings so you all know what each other are up to
• Have shared dashboards and performance metrics in place
• Always encourage open communication and feedback loops (and avoid those last-minute "please change this now" moments)

4) Always have your learning mode switched ON and be adaptive

• Make time for regular (or frequent) alignment workshops
• Reassess your goals on a quarterly basis to make sure they're working for everyone
• Shout after me: Culture 👏 of 👏 continuous 👏 improvement 👏

3 solutions to your workflow and collaboration problems

1. Optimizely Content Marketing Platform (CMP): Combining your favorite project management tool with a DAM system, ultimate workflows, and AI at every stage of the marketing lifecycle, Optimizely Content Marketing Platform (CMP) is the answer to at least four of your problems, saving you SO much time.
2. Slack or Teams: Sometimes, we all need a little extra—more instant—nudge by way of Slack or Teams messages, whether that be individual messages or creating key channels for teams, projects, and campaigns.
3. Lucidchart: Visual collaboration tool are great for sharing visions and combining information, inspiration, and ideas in one place—and spoiler alert: we love Lucidchart at Optimizely.

Find out all about Optimizely's AI solution AKA your ultimate marketing sidekick, Optimizely Opal.

More integrated marketing, more impressive results

By leveraging modern collaborative technologies, fostering a more open culture, and maintaining a relentless focus on shared objectives, companies can transform their biggest organizational challenge into their greatest competitive advantage. The answer is integrated marketing.

Pro tip: Start small. Choose one cross-functional initiative, implement alignment strategies, measure results, and scale gradually.

Start building your integrated marketing strategy today, with this 10-step guide.