If you want your small business to grow and thrive for the long-term, then the most important strategic skill you can have is driving high alignment with your workforce.

Now, alignment doesn’t work in one way. You can’t just tell your employees, “you have to get aligned with where we’re trying to go,” because alignment is very much a psychological and emotional thing. It’s the thing that causes your employee to think, “I can go all in for my boss because my boss is going all in for me. I don’t have to worry about what’s in it for me.”

The way that you get there is by figuring out how the opportunity that you’re presenting to your team will produce the best long-term results for them. In other words, you get in touch with what’s in it for them.

You need to figure out how to align your opportunity with their needs. Make the two things the same and now your team can go all in for you.

So, if you haven’t figured out how to get your employees aligned with where you’re trying to go, you might need to start by making sure that the opportunity is aligned with where they are trying to go.