Blue Dots Partners

Achieving business alignment is a complex puzzle that often eludes even the most experienced management teams. Solving that puzzle is what I have been driven by for more than a decade, since I started to work in management consulting.

I found an elegant metallic puzzle called the Cast Cylinder that was designed by Finnish inventor Vesa Timonen. Timonen is a very creative 3D thinker and tinkerer capable of designing the most perplexing puzzles while using as few pieces as possible.

The challenge is to take Cast Cylinder apart and then reassemble the five pieces. The outside of the cylinder gives absolutely no clues, but inside there is a hidden trick. Like in the business world, a perfect alignment must be achieved to succeed.

Cast Cylinder puzzle designed by Vesa Timonen( courtesy of Hanayama with permission from Teddy Sakamoto)

As often happens when solving puzzles, the assembly and disassembly are unsymmetrical. It is actually easier to dismantle the five-piece puzzle than to put it back together. The same applies in business: aligning the various pieces is a lot more challenging than letting the business get misaligned either with its market or internally. It requires careful observations, knowledge and dedication to begin to understand the problems caused by misalignments.