It’s still good advice: go for the low-hanging fruit in a friendly orchard. But in today’s world of competitive excellence, it’s just not enough. These days, companies that want to stay ahead of the competition must go beyond process improvement and transform the way they do business. This means achieving not just incremental improvements, but breakthrough results by understanding and leveraging the relationship between processes, systems, people and strategy.

Business transformation requires the organization to focus on strategic goals, not just problems, and on disseminating those goals throughout the organization. In other words, it enables you to connect the dots between the big picture and tactical assignments – between forward-thinking strategy and project execution. Making this link is called strategic alignment. And, today, it’s the answer to the question, “Where do we start?”

On July 20, 1969, astronaut Neil Armstrong landed on the Moon, signaling the attainment of President John F. Kennedy’s vision to put a man on the Moon and return him safely to earth. The accomplishment required nearly a decade of research and experimentation by NASA as it worked to overcome one technical challenge after another: the ability to dock two ships together in space, the design of the Lunar Excursion Module, and the inherent difficulties of manned space travel.

Each of these breakthroughs not only made the Apollo moon missions possible, but also enabled many other excursions to outer space. But what if President Kennedy had been less ambitious? What if his vision had been to send an unmanned “rover” to the Moon, or what if he hadn’t even thought it possible to reach the moon? How many of these breakthroughs would exist today? Of course, it’s difficult to say with certainty, but one thing is for sure -– if mankind had never set a goal to land on the moon, we never would have gotten there.

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