Hi everyone✌️,

Welcome to a brand new issue of INFUZED on people, more specifically, how to think about true alignment and why it's so important.

💡 If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together. 💡

While some might use this often-quoted African Proverb to justify doing things their way to be faster, we should issue a caveat: there is no such thing as building something alone. You might build something by yourself, but that doesn’t mean you won’t need anyone else to get to your destination. 

If you’re building something, at the very least you will eventually need customers to support your venture or project. When building an organization though, you’ll very likely need to win the support of other people in the form of partners, employees or colleagues. 

There is one foundational prerequisite for winning and sustaining the support of others:

„True Alignment“ 

True alignment exclusively happens when both parties continuously, and equally, benefit from the relationship. As soon as one party doesn’t receive an equal benefit, they have no reason to continue the relationship. This might come in the form of customers leaving, employees quitting, or partners withdrawing. 

We can borrow from game theory to visualise alignment and have a template to evaluate our relationships.

True alignment only is achieved in the top right quadrant, a win-win situation for both parties involved. 

If the relationship slips into one of the other three quadrants, there is no incentive for the other party to continue to support the relationship.  

Let’s take a brief look at two devastating examples of how misalignment emerges:

You’re building your team and hire an amazing contributor. They are fired up about the mission and want to help the venture succeed. At first, they are excited to be part of the team, challenged to contribute, and you celebrate their first wins with them. They grow within the environment that you’ve built and are compensated fairly. However, at one point down the road, their job might not challenge them anymore or they feel a stagnation in their development, at the same time the venture continues to thrive and grow. While their contribution reaps you the same or even more benefits by now, they are not getting as much out of their job anymore. They might have gotten raises in their pay or even part-ownership of the venture, but at that point, you’re gaining more than them from the relationship which then slides out of the top right quadrant. Suddenly, your top contributor quits. 

The second example can similarly be made when looking at a customer relationship. At first, they are willing to pay you anything you ask, as you’re having an amazing offer they just can’t refuse. However, over time your contribution to their success becomes marginally less and while they’re still getting the same product or service, they don’t gain as much as you do from the relationship anymore. Which, you guessed it right, slides that relationship out of the top right quadrant as well and you’re at risk of losing that customer. 

It’s well worth to continuously examine your relationships for true alignment. Before you enter a new one and continuously when you are in one. 

True alignment between all parties involved will make any venture more likely to succeed. As anything worth building is built for the long run, it’s better to create alignment and go it together. 

CHALLENGE

Take one relationship in your venture and try to determine its exact location on the graph above.

Here are some examples of relationships you could investigate:

• You vs. Your team with regards to the set goals
• You vs. Your most recent (or oldest) customer with regards to the benefits of your agreement
• You vs. Your direct report with regards to them being part of your team
• You vs. Your audience or potential customers with regards to paying attention to your marketing

For the challenge, you can download a printable worksheet here.

BONUS: will this evaluation remain static or will it change over time? In which case might you be able to preemptively readjust your relationship?

BONUS II: Do the exercise for all of the relevant relationships you come up with. You’ll gain a clear picture which of them is in need for some extra attention.

Create true alignment, and please let me know if INFUZED does not provide you with the value your attention deserves! 

Have a great week,

David

PS: Just in case you think you could get by sliding into a 1 / 0 quadrant, check how alike a win / lose matrix is: