Does it need radical transparency?
Alignment has two different meanings in business. One permits trust whilst the other demands vigilance. When travelers have a common objective, progress towards a joint goal benefits both. They can share resources and information with confidence. Cooperation is frictionless; there is no need to keep a tally of benefits. The joint destination encourages mutuality. There is a level of trust.
If however one traveller has deviated from their path to be with the other, their goals are different. Both parties should monitor their relationship and be prepared to act when imbalance makes it unstable.
The first situation is congruent alignment, the second, strategic. To mistake the second for the first puts misplaced reliance on trust. Trust is highlighted in a number of major books on selling. All recognise the crucial importance of openness in a relationship if trust is involved
The first, Conceptual Selling (1987), describes a joint venture mindset in which the parties to negotiation reveal not only their corporate pay-offs from the deal, but their own personal incentives from a successful conclusion.
The second, The Trusted Advisor (2000), is responsible for the famous Trust Equation, a formula for assessing trustworthiness:
Trust = (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) / Self-Orientation [T = (C+R+I)/S],
Higher Credibility, Reliability, and Intimacy boost trust, while increased Self-Orientation (focusing on oneself) reduces it. Self-interest is an inverse factor (a divisor) in the equation because increasing self-interest reduces trust. Could this divisor be replaced by congruent alignment as a multiplier?
This radical-transparency, cards-on-the-table approach was once radical. It is so no longer; it is also advised in ‘Give and Take’ (2013), ‘Never Split the Difference’ (2016), and ‘The Transparency Sale’ (2018). It is nevertheless still not understood; and not just by sales people. Internal staff who rely on other business units, functions and colleagues talk about internal client partnership and alignment when they want to give the appearance of support or are invoking some supposedly shared corporate aim. They too openly talk about selling their services. It is especially naive of anyone in a continuing relationship to imagine they appear sincere and trustworthy unless they are open about their own rewards and incentives..
The post What is Alignment? appeared first on SWISSUES.