Today’s post is courtesy of Alex Vorobieff, the founder and CEO of The Vorobieff Company, a premier business-consulting organization. A highly sought-after speaker and business alignment coach, Alex Vorobieff has helped scores of successful companies eliminate the real source of their frustration using business alignment tools (a term he coined after years of working with and investigating different business systems).

Can you remember starting a new job and crossing invisible lines without knowing it? And how you felt when you crossed those invisible lines and realized you didn’t understand what was important.

I can; it was 25 years ago while preparing my first professional spreadsheet as an intern at a small CPA firm. Getting paid $10 an hour, it wasn’t six figures, but it was double digits per hour and it was a “real work.”

I prepared the spreadsheet and gave it to my boss.

He reviewed it.

It shocked him

He could not follow my work. It went down, to the left, and then to the right.

Apparently, you didn’t want to zigzag as you did calculations. It was important to follow a logical direction so someone else could understand your work.

He questioned whether hiring me was a good idea. I didn’t seem to “get it.”

I had crossed some invisible lines.

He wasn’t happy we had to rework the spreadsheet. I felt horrible, I learned a lesson but it was costly for both of us.

When I graduated and joined a larger firm, the firm trained me on the basics how to prepare spreadsheets. No wonder my first boss wasn’t pleased. Then I understood where those lines were and how to use them to do a better job. “I got it!”

Every job and every company has invisible lines. Does your company help people to see them before they cross them? Or do you wait until they cross the lines and you have to make a costly correction?

If you want people on your team to “get it” letting them know what “it” is beforehand saves time and money.

Yea, its not rocket science but people cross invisible lines every day.

Invisible lines often define key things that are essential to provide value to customers and profit for the company. They are so important how could you not let people know where they are and how to use them to help guide their decisions and actions?

When people know where the invisible lines are and the importance of not crossing them they “get it” and people stop mumbling after being chastised for crossing invisible lines and people in the company start using the powerful refrain of “we get it.”

About Alex Vorobieff

Founder and CEO of The Vorobieff Company, Alex Vorobieff is a business turnaround specialist, working to implement Business Alignment Tools for their specific needs. Alex has served as clean-up CFO and president of companies in telecommunications, aviation, aerospace, and real estate development, leading successful turnarounds in as little as three months. He shares his how-tos and techniques through Confident ROi magazine and his latest book, Transform Your Company: Escape Frustration, Align Your Business, and Get Your Life Back.

Follow Alex on Twitter @AVorobieff and on his website. You can also check out his regular podcast ConfidentROI.