Who here has worked for a company where each functional department defines their objectives? The goals are set within small siloed teams. When asked how to improve sales, sales is the only team that’s looked at. Now, how many of you have worked for a company that defines short and long term objectives and then each team brainstorms on how to help with achieving those objectives? That’s the key to success.

I primarily work in IT but always look at the business side first. If the projects that IT is working on do not align with company objectives, those projects are deprioritized.

How do you set company objectives? This is where communication amongst leadership is key. Ideally, 3–4 primary goals are outlined and the leaders within the organization outline at a high-level how to achieve these goals from their strongpoints.

If the objective is to finish the year off strong in sales, the sales functional team should not be the only team that brainstorms how to contribute to it while everyone else just buries their head in the sand.

From an IT perspective, for example, providing adequate data to the sales team through proper reporting mechanisms should be top priority. Working on applications that bring in sales is another big one where IT can contribute directly. Bringing in multiple teams to outline strategies, like Marketing and IT, will be key to help drive sales from a different line. Sales of course needs to have a seat at the table to help outline the pricing model structure that will drive the most top-line.

Each department should go through the following exercise on their own:

• Specify what the company objective that you’re trying to meet is.
• Outline which projects your functional team currently has.
• Prioritize those projects in order of importance and relevance to helping achieve company objectives.
• Train team to think in order of achieving company objectives.
• Meet regularly and help reprioritize the projects internally.
• Meet with other departments to see if new projects need to be introduced in order to meet objectives.
• Watch the company grow.

It really is that simple. If you want the company to grow, you’re going to need to define and stick to overall company goals. If each department is doing what they believe is best, you might as well have multiple small companies within the large organization trying to achieve their own goals.