Innovation
Axibra helps organizations grow their innovation capability — across the whole company, not in one team.
See how it worksThe UNITE Team Alignment model visually demonstrates different ways of creating alignment in a team and their implications.
The package
The case
In an innovation team, we want everyone to be moving the project forward. Still, at the same time, the freedom and autonomy necessary for innovation require that individuals are not micromanaged (!) . So how can we balance these two principles? This model shows us how.
The mechanics
When we think about how to make progress towards a goal, there are two factors to consider, alignment and autonomy. When we have low autonomy and low alignment, it results in micromanaging. Individuals neither have the freedom to work independently nor do they understand the purpose behind the work they do. Obviously, this is not going to work to produce true innovation.However, you can’t just boost one of the two factors. Autonomy without alignment leads to chaos. Everyone is doing their own thing, and some of those things may be productive, but they do not lead to a collective move forward. Similarly, if we increase alignment but not autonomy, we end up with a hierarchical command structure. Everyone understands what is being done and why, but there is not enough individual autonomy to think of new and different ways of achieving the same goal. When you increase autonomy and alignment, however, a self-organizing group forms that understands the overall goal and is enabled to work independently and creatively to achieve that very goal.
The purpose
What is the goal of the model?
Balancing freedom and progress. When we structure a team around a clear purpose and values, we can ensure that everyone is pulling in the same direction without yoking them to a hierarchical model that stifles their creativity.
Beyond the download
The PDF is yours to keep. But a model changes something only when it touches the work — and that is what Axibra does with it. The model becomes the structure your decisions are made in, and every outcome stays traceable back to the input it came from.
In practice
For years we applied this model by hand, in client engagements. It now runs inside Axibra.
Axibra helps organizations grow their innovation capability — across the whole company, not in one team.
See how it worksAxibra closes the infamous gap between strategy and execution, and carries a transformation through to delivery.
See how it worksCulture is the first reason transformations fail. Axibra keeps the organizational side of a decision in view instead of leaving it to chance.
See how it worksThousands of organizations leverage the UNITE models — these are some of them …
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From here on
Axibra is where these models run. It carries a decision through to the work that follows it, and keeps every result traceable back to the input it came from. If you would rather start with a conversation, we are one call away.
Strategy does not fail in the thinking. It fails in the handover.
Stefan F. DieffenbacherFounder & Managing Director of Digital Leadership
