Ask any leadership team if they’re aligned, and you’ll generally get a confident yes. After all, they’ve sat in the same meetings, approved the same plans, and nodded at the same slides. And yet, when it comes down to executing those plans, nothing happens.
Misalignment is rarely fiery or dramatic. More often, it’s quiet hesitation, second-guessing, or just enough friction to slow down the business. And that should be all the proof you need to understand why alignment in principle and alignment in execution are two very different things.
Why This Happens
It’s tempting to think that misalignment boils down to bad communication. “If only we said it clearer,” we think, “everyone would get it.” Sometimes that’s true. It is rare that a line employee will have spent as much time as a founder or CEO thinking about the strategic direction a company needs to take. The reality is more nuanced, though.
Often, misalignment arises because ideas that seem clear at a high level become messy in practice. The neat decisions we make in leadership meetings rarely play out as expected. Unforeseen challenges like underestimated complexity, incomplete assumptions, or unexpected dependencies regularly derail the “keep it simple” approach we often take when developing strategy.
This situation can be exacerbated when human reactions get in the way. When we think that a group of people is aligned and then nothing happens, the natural tendency is to see the failure as resistance or even incompetence. People may not feel comfortable openly challenging colleagues, especially senior ones. Instead, disagreement and frustration simmer quietly beneath the surface because nobody wants to make waves.
At the heart of these issues is an uncomfortable truth: leadership teams often lack the structures, visibility, or culture to surface and resolve these issues productively.
Aligning Your Team
Aligning your team starts at the beginning of any “big picture” conversation by making sure you get into just enough detail to know what success might look like. By way of example, saying that “customer success is our top priority” is useless without talking about what that actually means.
Strategic decisions and plans will always be founded on a set of assumptions, some of which may be unspoken. Question them. Maybe one leader assumes technology can easily scale, while another worries about hidden complexity. Leaders should explicitly state these assumptions and invite constructive critiques. Without explicit acknowledgment, these assumptions become landmines in execution.
Encourage direct discourse. There is a difference between confronting issues and being confrontational. You shouldn’t be aggressive, but you should articulate your concerns. Leadership teams need to be able to disagree, to identify concerns early, and discuss them openly—before decisions are made.
Finally, recognize when the rubber is not meeting the road. Every plan should have regular checkpoints where people can ask: “Is this still working? Are we still aligned?” The best leadership teams don’t second guess decisions—but they do recognize when things aren’t going as planned.
Now What?
To gauge your own team’s alignment, look at their execution. If decisions made at leadership level are consistently getting distorted, ignored, or reinterpreted as they trickle down, there is a disconnect. Your job as a leader is to create an environment where the issues and disagreements can be addressed constructively. The alternative is that things don’t get done.
Alignment requires work, active communication, and the courage to openly address reality, regardless of whose idea it is and how preciously it is held.