Abstract
Organizations function effectively because they put together different characteristics in complementary ways. This paper introduces an alignment model that informs business leaders how to configure the firm’s market approaches, business design, and human assets for effective strategic performance. The firm’s strategic mission provides the balancing element for the alignment model. This paper will also present findings from a survey of over 300 firms based on the elements of the alignment model. Our research shows the following: A large percentage of firms are stuck-in-the-middle regarding their configurations and firms that weakly align their market approach with employee know-how and have non-distinct cultures tend to perform at an average level against their peers. Implications for creating winning configurations are discussed.