1-2-1: When alignment becomes the bottleneck

The word I keep hearing in sessions right now is "alignment," usually right before nothing happens.

Half my coaching work is alignment. Here's when it becomes the problem.

1 Principle

Alignment done once creates momentum. Alignment done constantly creates paralysis.

The tell is in the direction of effort. Teams aligned once spend their energy moving forward. Teams aligning constantly spend their energy making sure everyone's comfortable before anything moves. One builds momentum. The other builds consensus dressed up as strategy.

2 Things Top of Mind

#1 Consensus theatre

At Pivotal Labs, I saw this pattern regularly in strategy sessions with clients. Leaders would say "we're aligned." Then we'd go around the room and get four different versions of the goal. Different customers. Different bets. Different definitions of success. They weren't misaligned on decisions. They'd never aligned on direction. The meeting would end with "let's align offline." Nothing would move for two weeks.

This week: In your next planning meeting, ask each person to write down the single most important outcome for the quarter. Don't discuss first. Compare answers. If they don't match, you've found the real problem.

#2 The pattern before anyone names it

There's a shift that happens before anyone calls it out: too many people in every decision, senior leaders solving problems their teams should own, and "let's align" used as a stall when someone doesn't want to commit. Any one of these on its own is normal. All three together means the system is compensating for a missing decision.

This week: Pick one recurring decision that currently involves more than three people. For one week, assign one decider. Define who provides input and who gets informed. One decision, one week. See what changes.

1 Question

Where is "let's align" being used to avoid making a decision?

If you have a story about a time you cut through consensus theatre, what you actually did, reply and share it. I'll include the best ones (anonymised) in a future edition.

Until next time,
Liam Darmody