Whether a new business initiative, a process redesign project, a startup venture, or an entire company, successful groups need a shared vision of what they want to achieve, and also why, how and when they want to achieve it. Aligned individuals have a clear picture of the group's destination and their role within it. They use that image to determine what actions to take and what choices to make among several options.

This might sound like an advertisement for the traditional vision/mission/strategy creation work of which many people have grown cynical. While there is merit in the value of defining direction and destination for an objective, formal company wide exercises, or smaller activities with less formality/rigor rarely succeed in producing the anticipated results. They fall short in terms of financial benefit, cost to deliver, timeliness, and sustainability.

The fatal flaw is inadequate recognition and leverage of Internal Dialogue. Whether someone is learning about the group's objectives or is involved in defining the destination of the initiative, their private response to any vision/mission/strategy statements will determine the degree to which they support its implementation.

Often thought but not widely shared is:

• 'This will never fly'
• 'The CEO must have just finished some new book, I just need to play the game and let it pass'
• 'Help produce an innovative, disruptive vision? Sure, to the extent I can ensure there is a job for me at the end of it'
• 'Sounds good but I don't think we can pull it off, and no-one wants to hear negatives after we've spent all this money and time creating it.'
• 'I can think of a novel metric for measuring our performance in this new area but won't mention it because I can't control it'

While lack of investment, incorrect strategy or faltering commitment are common excuses, failure to design a destination and action plan that considers people's private thoughts and feelings is the underlying and hidden root cause.

SchellingPoint offers products and set of services to make those difficult-to-discuss thoughts discussable, generating tight alignment and cohesive approaches most likely to succeed. Individuals learn skills for maximizing alignment in day-to-day situations using live issues as examples.

The result is a tightly aligned group around the subject initiative, from company visions to internal projects to customer relationship methodologies.