“If you want to really see someone’s strategy, take all their strategy books, missions, visions—take them all outdoors and make a big bonfire. The real strategy is the operating budget, the capital budget, who’s been promoted, who’s been held back.”

 - Eileen Shapiro, author/strategist 

“You just can’t wake up one day and decide, ‘We’re going to be innovative.’ . . . It’s not the people, it’s the structure. Structure dictates what people can do.”

 - Richard Beene, President and CEO, The Bakersfield Californian

The above are two quotes from “Achieving Strategic Alignment,” a paper about putting staffing, structure and (financial) support behind innovation in newspaper newsrooms (a.k.a. putting your money where your mouth is).

The goal of the paper is to show newspaper executives the difference between saying “We should innovate,” and actually innovating. (Remember those New Years’ resolutions you made and never did?)

Writer Wendy Zomparelli of Kannon Consulting points out that it’s not possible to achieve a goal without putting in place the people and procedures that can make that goal a reality. She accomplishes this by using real examples from newsrooms and clearly explaining the business concepts behind strategic alignment.

“Achieving Strategic Alignment” is the first of three Horizon Watching papers NAA will release this year. The goal of NAA’s Horizon Watching initiative is to provide the industry with an eye on the future, to “help identify technological and competitive forces reshaping the industry and articulate strategies for successful adaptation to this new media environment.” The NAA Board Committee on Industry Development oversees the initiative.