What Is Alignment?
Alignment is getting everyone—your team, your staff, your organization, your stakeholders—locked onto the same goal, moving in sync like a well-oiled machine. Picture your organization as a wheel rolling toward a central goal—the hub. The spokes are your people, each one carefully chosen, placed, and strengthened to keep the wheel steady and moving forward. Alignment ensures every spoke radiates toward the hub, with no one pulling off-course. In the boardroom, this means every department, from sales to IT, is pulling for the same outcome, not chasing their own agendas.
Why’s it critical? Without alignment, you get chaos—teams working at cross-purposes, wasted effort, and missed targets. It’s the foundation of the alignment-assignment-execution framework we’ve talked about, setting the stage for clear roles and flawless execution.
Why Alignment Matters
Drives Focus: When everyone’s aligned, energy isn’t wasted on side missions. A company aiming to boost customer retention doesn’t get sidetracked by a flashy new product that dilutes resources.
Builds Trust: Alignment shows people their work matters to the big picture, fostering the respect and empathy vs the opposite, employees griping about leaders who set vague goals or play favorites, killing morale.
Amplifies Impact: Aligned teams hit harder. A 2023 McKinsey study found companies with clear, shared goals outperform misaligned competitors by 30% in revenue growth. That’s the power of moving as one.
How to Achieve Proper Alignment
Here’s the playbook for getting alignment right, with practical steps rooted in our talks about leadership, clarity, and culture:
Define the North Star (Clarity)
Start with a crystal-clear goal—the hub of the wheel. As Jordan Peterson says, “You need a goal that’s high enough to inspire but grounded enough to act on” (12 Rules for Life). It’s not just “grow the business” but rather “increase revenue by 15% in 12 months through new client acquisition.” This “proper aim” aligns the team and sharpens focus.
Communicate it relentlessly—emails, all-hands, one-on-ones. Make it so clear no one’s guessing what the win looks like. Post it on walls, anywhere and everywhere you can.
2. Get Buy-In (Empathy)
Alignment isn’t top-down orders; it’s co-creation. Involve your team early—ask for input, like we’ve said about listening in leadership. Your mom’s wisdom fits here: treat people like their voice matters, and they’ll commit to the hub.
Example: A manager holds a workshop to shape the annual goal, letting sales and marketing weigh in. Result? They own the plan, not just follow it.
3. Align Personnel: Hiring and Training the Right Spokes (A bit of Alignment and Assignment)
A wheel only rolls if every spoke is the right fit, perfectly placed, and strong enough to handle the load. Hiring and training are how you ensure the right people are in the right roles, each one connecting their unique strengths to the hub’s goal.
Hiring for Fit: Hire for skills, values, and potential, not just resumes. Use Peterson’s “proper aim” to guide the process: ask, “Does this person’s purpose align with our hub?” Structured interviews with behavioral questions—“Tell me about a time you turned a challenge into a win”—test for mindset and ability. Example: A sales team hires someone who’s not just a deal-closer but collaborative, fitting the company’s empathetic culture.
Training for Strength: A weak spoke snaps under pressure. Training builds resilience and skill to execute the hub’s goal. Go beyond handbooks—offer technical training, mentorship, and clear expectations tied to the mission. Example: A company trains customer service reps on empathy-driven interactions to boost loyalty, not just system know-how. Regular feedback, like weekly check-ins, keeps spokes sturdy.
Placing with Precision: Assign roles with care, ensuring each person’s strengths align with the hub. A data analyst who thrives on big-picture strategy shouldn’t be stuck in repetitive reporting.
Tie-in: This is alignment in action—placing the right spokes to drive the wheel toward the goal, avoiding the entitlement trap where mis-hires expect rewards without contributing.
4. Connect the Dots (Perspective)
Show everyone how their work ties to the hub. A finance team crunching numbers needs to see how their accuracy fuels the company’s ability to invest or the QC manager understanding the extreme value of making sure the highest rated, perfect product hits the warehouse.
Tie in the Why: Back to a little Simon Sinek and something I’ve used in several locations is to make sure the “Why,” is felt company wide. This helps increase ownership, accountability and even better—coworkers/teammates start having each others back for support, training, etc.
5. Remove Silos (Collaboration)
Silos are like bent spokes—they weaken the wheel. Departments hoarding info or competing for clout—like marketing and sales fighting over credit—create friction. Break them down with cross-team syncs. Be transparent and share info. One team.
Mom’s rule—treat other teams like you’d want to be treated, sharing resources generously.
6. Check and Adjust (Discipline)
Alignment isn’t set-it-and-forget-it. Regularly check if every spoke is still locked onto the hub, like a pilot adjusting course. Stay in tune, keep communication open and address challenges as they arise.
Where Alignment Goes Wrong
Vague Goals: Saying “be the best” leaves teams guessing, like a wheel with no hub. Peterson’s “proper aim” warns against this—without a clear target, you’re flailing. Have an aim and lock in, nothing else matters.
Lack of Inclusion: If only the boss sets the goal, the spokes feel like hired help, not partners. This breeds the entitlement trap we discussed—people disengage, expecting others to carry the load.
Poor Communication: Even a great hub flops if it’s buried in jargon or only shared once. We’ve talked about crystal clear communication—alignment demands it, every time.
Misaligned Incentives or Hires: If sales is rewarded for volume but the hub is profitability, or if a hire’s skills don’t match their role, the wheel wobbles. Again, every single decision made has to be in alignment with the goal.
Fixing Misalignment
Clarify and Repeat: Boil the hub down to one sentence, inspired by Peterson’s “proper aim,” and hammer it home—walls, everywhere.
Involve Everyone: Use town halls or surveys to shape the goal. Empathy makes spokes feel seen, not steamrolled.
Align Metrics and Roles: Ensure KPIs and job assignments ladder up to the hub.
Lead by Example: Leaders must model alignment. If one unit starts chasing side projects over the hub, the spokes will wobble—or break. We’ve said it in leadership: walk the talk.
Real-World Impact
In the Office: A sales team aligns around “increase sales by 10%.” They hire data-driven product managers and train support for faster responses, each spoke strengthening the wheel. Result? They hit 22% and boost morale.
In Life: A family aligns on “spend more quality time together.” They “hire” the right activities (game nights) and “train” by setting screen-free habits, keeping empathy first.
On the Field: A football team aligns around “win the conference championship.” The coach hires a quarterback coach whose skills match the team’s personnel and fast-paced offense, trains the defensive line on new techniques to counter most relevant offensive strategies. Each player and coach, like a spoke, is placed and prepared to drive the hub’s goal. Result? They go 10-2, clinch the title, and build a tight-knit locker room culture.
My Call
Alignment, with proper aim, is the hub that holds the wheel together, while hiring and training are the spokes that make it roll. It’s about setting a clear, meaningful goal, getting everyone to buy in, and ensuring the right people are in the right roles, strengthened to execute. Like we’ve said about culture, it takes discipline, empathy, and relentless clarity to keep the wheel spinning. Get it right, and you’re unstoppable. Get it wrong, and you’re stuck in the entitlement trap, with spokes pulling in different directions, expecting someone else to fix it. Alignment and hiring are where it starts—without them, execution’s just noise.