Business Interfaces, Performance Networks - And a New View of Alignment

Performance management has traditionally been a hierarchical discipline, one that follows a top-down approach. Organizations roll up budgets, cascade scorecards, drill down to locate deviations from the plan. Yet most current business models, notes Frank Buytendijk, are not hierarchical; they are networked. Despite the advent of new structures and mechanisms (process management, theme teams), a gap persists between how businesses run and how they are managed. Buytendijk, author of Performance Leadership (McGraw-Hill, 2008), argues that the term "Alignment" needs an expanded definition - and new measurement approaches.