Five reasons why alignment doesn’t get any easier at the top – and what to do about it

Even though Top Executives and Board-level leaders interact close-up with the strategy and have the power to make decisions, alignment doesn’t get any easier.?Being on the same page about the strategy means in terms of implementation across the organization comes with a unique set of challenges at the top level.?For a start, while advanced alignment tools are now available, many leaders don’t see their problems in terms of alignment issues. I talked with four senior Executive coaches to break this down.

1.??????Leaders are not supported to align

Neuroscience provides the evidence: people in organizations simply interpret things differently according to their motivations and individual framing. This can result in jarring or conflicting opinions that are hard to shake.?This affects almost everyone, but it is worse for leaders right from the point of onboarding. Indeed, much Senior Executive onboarding assumes alignment will happen automatically once discussions about the context and its nuances start taking place.

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2.??????The stakes are higher

Senior leaders are less likely to have conversations that lead to better alignment because their sense of exposure is heightened, and the fear of shame or blame is ever-present. They are more aware of the big-picture issues but there’s no one else to escalate the issues to.?All this amplifies anxiety, which makes it more difficult to share, talk, and collaborate. They'd rather avoid the crunchy, if critical, conversations than deal with ‘undiscuss-ables’ because there's more emotion when the stakes are higher and it would likely feel too confronting. The only route from there is to adopt the safer strategy to ‘pick things up’ as they go, leaving key alignment gaps open.?

3.??????They are not familiar with alignment as a process

Today's alignment approaches such as Mirror Mirror are only just now making their way into mainstream use. Based on integrated research, they incorporate cognitive and behavioural aspects into their design. For example, Social Constructionism Theory, right back to the 1970,'s recognizes that people need to make sense of their context through language with others (Berger and Luckmann) so dialogue is part of the cognitive alignment process. And because Team Learning Behaviours are needed to build alignment capability in teams (van den Bossche, 2010), insights into the extent to which these are practiced by participants is also included.

There is much in the social sciences literature about the definition and process of alignment. Few leaders have experience of these latest approaches at work.

4.??????Aligning is different from your typical leadership communications

We've often heard leaders confused because while they've shared the strategy with their team, people still don't seem to 'get it'.

Yet, by nature, people cannot be 'told' to align. They have to make sense of things on their own terms - which brings us back to Social Constructionism Theory.

This turns leadership on it's head because the alignment process can only be led by a facilitator so people can be guided to listen, share, and open up to diverse views.

5.??????There is so much more to align on

Strategic, operational, long term and short-term considerations bring complexity and ambiguity, two of the main drivers of misalignment.?An example of this is a Leadership Team wrestling simultaneously with questions of a vision for the long term, set against the backdrop of the need to make savings in the short term.

Each leader is busy dealing with multiple moving parts, which leaves less head-space for challenges in other parts of the business. This drives leaders to act as individuals rather than as a team, again moving away from what’s needed to align: intentionally joining the dots in practice.

And finally, while arguably all observable problems can be traced back to misalignment, most leaders focus on fixing the problems, not building the capabilities of people in the organization to become better aligned.

Alignment starts with knowing where the gaps are

The Mirror Mirror process collects data about how people view aspects of their shared work.?For example, leadership and executive teams are asked to rate statements like these so that their responses can be compared. This way the extent of alignment becomes clear at the granular, actionable leve:

• We organize the pursuit of our individual goals in service of their shared goals
• We use our power to help others be stronger and make more valuable contributions
• We communicate a clear and consistent story across the organization formally and informally.

Perception comparison data informs the alignment process. And because alignment is the basis of effective decisions and actions, it is the foundation of effective work.

Thanks to Steve Hearsum, Michael Moriarty, Anna Wrobel, and Bulent Duagi for their contributions to this article.?