The Myth of Alignment
Executives often take comfort in the idea that strategy execution is a problem of alignment. If the plan is clear, the goals are cascaded, and accountability measures are in place, then surely, execution will follow.
It’s a reasonable assumption, and one that’s been reinforced by decades of management writing. Yet the data tells a different story. Across industries, even the best-formulated strategies fail more often than they succeed, with some research showing that only about 20% of companies achieve even half of their strategic targets.
Why? Because alignment, understood as structural compliance, doesn’t equal commitment. Real alignment lives deeper than cascading metrics. It requires shared understanding, mutual ownership, and the courage to surface and address obstacles that most organizations prefer not to name.
Change Leadership, not Change Management
The idea that “execution equals alignment” is the belief that if everyone knows the plan and reports progress against it, the organization will move in unison. In reality, formal alignment often hides fragmentation. Teams interpret goals differently. Functions optimize for their own scorecards. Leaders speak the language of collaboration but continue to act in their silos.
John Kotter, in "Leading Change," wrote that “major change is often said to be 70% to 90% leadership and 10% to 30% management.” The distinction matters. Management enforces alignment; leadership builds commitment. Management sets direction; leadership generates energy.
Execution falters when organizations lean only on systems of compliance without creating structures of engagement.
Most leaders are not blind to this dynamic. They sense that something gets lost between the clarity of a strategic plan or change initiative and the lived reality of daily work. The insight is that alignment-by-directive may change behavior at the surface by producing compliant agreement. But this is not the same as genuine belief and sustainable change.
Why Agreement Isn’t Enough
When teams “agree” with a strategy in a formal setting, they often mean they won’t oppose it. They’ll implement their parts faithfully. They’ll report their metrics. But they may not challenge underlying assumptions or mental models that make the strategy hard to execute.
Kotter describes this as one of the hidden barriers to change: a lack of honest conversation about what’s really standing in the way. Obstacles, he argued, aren’t just operational; they’re emotional, cultural, and structural.
“Whenever smart and well-intentioned people avoid confronting obstacles, they disempower employees and undermine change.”
That’s why alignment built on information-sharing or goal-setting feels incomplete. Leaders can cascade understanding, but they can’t cascade conviction. Conviction has to be built, through courageous conversation, participation, and design.
How Engagement Builds Real Alignment
When strategies unravel, the problem isn’t always in the plan; it’s in the process that produced it. Most strategic planning still happens as an executive exercise: leaders gather inputs, make tradeoffs, and communicate decisions. The process feels efficient, but it often bypasses the very dialogue that could reveal misalignment before execution begins.
That’s why the most effective leaders and the healthiest organizations treat strategy development as a participatory design process. They make space for facilitated conversations where stakeholders can explore not only what must be done, but what must be true for it to happen.
In these sessions, obstacles aren’t treated as dissent; they’re treated as data. Participants are encouraged to name the real barriers — fear, overload, ambiguity, competing incentives. What emerges isn’t always neat, but it’s real. And from that reality, shared ownership begins to form.
It’s the difference between a plan people are told to execute and a strategy they’ve helped to design.
Naming Obstacles as a Strategic Discipline
This practice of naming and examining obstacles before acting isn’t a detour from strategy; it is strategy.
If the first element of strategy is correctly diagnosing the challenge or opportunity, the second is surely clarifying what’s really standing in the way of success. Many leaders skip that step, stopping at articulating broad ambitions but never digging into the internal and external forces that will work against those goals. They believe, mistakenly, that management systems will naturally overcome these obstacles.
Kotter’s work reinforces the same insight. Change doesn’t fail because people are lazy or resistant; it fails because leaders underestimate the barriers that prevent movement. His research identifies common categories of obstacles: overloaded structures, unclear communication channels, entrenched habits, and what he calls “the fear of losing face.” When these go unnamed, they quietly undermine execution and behavior regresses to the status quo.
Participatory design creates a structured way to surface and address them. By inviting employees and managers into the strategy formation process, leaders turn latent resistance into active insight. People will tell the truth about obstacles if they believe someone is listening and if they see that candor leads to better decisions, not punishment.
Facilitated Dialogue: The Engine of Alignment
Facilitated discussions are not mere workshops. They are the operating system for engagement. Done well, they bring management discipline and leadership vision together.
A skilled facilitator helps leaders and teams:
- Distinguish between symptoms and root causes.
- Translate abstract goals into “what must be true” statements.
- Identify where incentives or behaviors contradict strategy.
- Create shared language around tradeoffs and priorities.
This process transforms strategy from an intellectual exercise into a social one. It builds a shared narrative—a sense that “we discovered this together.” And that story becomes a far more powerful source of alignment than any communication plan.
In Kotter’s model, this is the movement from “compliance” to “commitment.” It’s how people become emotionally and actively invested in the change, not just passively following instructions.
From Alignment to Ownership
The core lesson from decades of change research is that alignment achieved through participation is far more durable than alignment achieved through mere agreement. When leaders engage in facilitated conversations, they don't lose time; they gain traction. These conversations serve as diagnostic tools, learning mechanisms, and trust-building activity, converting potential resistance into visible progress.
This process isn't about democratizing every decision, but about designing a system where individuals can openly address obstacles and contribute to solutions. As Kotter suggests, this "accelerator" effect allows engaged groups to drive change more rapidly than hierarchical control.
True alignment, therefore, is not found in PowerPoint slides but is forged in the collaborative conversations that precede a finalized plan, where people collectively confront challenges and commit to the path forward. Ultimately, alignment isn't just agreement—it's ownership.
Shift Group Consulting helps executive teams design strategies that work because they’re built together—through facilitated dialogue, shared understanding, and the courage to name what’s really in the way. Reach Alex Sydnor, President and CEO, at alex.sydnor@shiftgroupconsulting.com.
