AUGIWorld Magazine - March/April 2008 - (Page 4) The CAD Manager You Need an Alignment veryone is familiar with the obstacle course of driving these days. Depending on your location and the weather conditions you may encounter bumps, potholes, and curbs in your day-today driving. You would think that the road conditions would provide smooth travel, but they often don’t. Eventually those things take a toll on your car’s steering system and tires. You know it’s time to take your car to a local wheel shop for alignment when your car pulls noticeably to one side, navigating normal turns becomes slightly difficult, or you have difficulty maintaining a straight course. Take your hands off the steering wheel and your car quickly drifts. Sometimes, however, the impact of poor wheel alignment on your car is very gradual. You may not feel any change in your car’s handling until it has become severe. For this reason, it’s also important to check the treads on your front tires periodically. If your steering is out of alignment, your tires will develop uneven wear patterns. Driving your automobile may be similar to driving your CAD environment. It may be hard to get people to move in a particular direction or follow “the rules of the road.” This may be because you are out of alignment. The kind of alignment needed in your CAD arena is different than your car. You need alignment with the firm’s goals. Aligning CAD with the business goals can be something that helps move your firm forward. By getting in line with where the business is going you can improve your success rate because you will be chasing the same targets as upper management. Getting on the bandwagon takes some thought. It does not happen on its own. 4 E Recognizing the need for alignment Here are a few signals that indicate you may be out of alignment. • Getting approval for your budgets is becoming difficult. • You cannot get people to agree that a CAD Standard is valuable. • There are teams of people who ignore your advice. • Things are getting worse rather than getting better. Some of these might happen with or without alignment, but alignment will help to avoid these things. By getting in line with your firms goals and strategic plans, you can achieve many advances that would be more difficult if you were not lined up. It is the synchronization of CAD goals to company goals that allows for better forward movement. Alignment rewards The rewards are many. Your firm is in business to offer products and services as a way to make money. Everything is focused on the bottom line. You should be also, but understand that you may not be able to do that the same way as others in the firm. After all, their clients are external; yours are internal. They send out invoices for services rendered; you cannot. So you need to find tangible ways to help the bottom line by getting behind the goals of the firm and pushing toward their success. w w w. A U G I . c o m http://www.augi.com
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