There are many business and IT management approaches, disciplines, (best) practices and technology solutions out there - arguably, too many!

They all promise their own "vision" of achieving an efficient, effective, profitable, responsive (you may substitute your favorite adjectives here, like lean, mature, agile, sustainable, etc.) enterprise and provide their unique path to Nirvana. Most of these management "approaches" have some genuine insights to contribute but they can suffer from some practical deficiencies that often cause them difficulties in the enterprise .....

1. Multiple "approaches" are often present in the one organization and so they can jostle for attention with each attempting to gain management favor - and more pragmatically, budget
2. Implementing the "vision" is never as simple as it first appears and the road to success can be long and winding making sustainability of the new approach problematic with the organization too-often reverting to business-as-usual when the budget is expended and the consultants go home
3. Realization of the promised benefits are rarely measurable and so there is often little evidence of the achievement - only the costs are visible while the expected return-on-investment remains unsubstantiated.

Into this somewhat pessimistic picture strides our new magazine and community site. The Alinement Network aims to provide an executive viewpoint of the "enterprise management" space. Our focus will be on the three areas of concern identified above and our mission will be to engage the international management-practitioner community to help:

• Explore the inter-relationships between different approaches proposed by different functional groups and how they can be leveraged to provide a comprehensive and unified enterprise management framework
• Investigate implementation experiences to identify patterns and distil the success/failure factors along with the process and techniques that can guarantee improved outcomes
• Share ideas for institutionalizing precious gains and "making it stick" in a manner that provides measurable benefits

Perhaps the most ambitious aspect of the Alinement Network's mission is to go beyond creating simply an active online community discussing the issues relating to enterprise management and to attempt the distillation of these exchanges into knowledge. As such, our initiative is linked to research being undertaken at Universities and we welcome collaboration with individuals and institutions who support our mission. Now that you know why the Alinement Network exists, please accept this invitation to join in the discussion!