Reframe: Blind Spots are Omnipresent
Having an aligned company, i.e., one where the core components are agreed upon, understood, and operated by everyone involved, is the Holy Grail for most Founders, CEOs, or MDs. If this is the desirable state, then it stands to reason that the opposite state, which should be avoided, is having a misaligned company. While this is grammatically correct, the reality is that alignment is not a binary state but is more nuanced than that. This means there are different levels or degrees of alignment, and while misalignment is never desirable, there is one state, seldom talked about ,which can be even more damaging to growth ambitions: illusional alignment.
This occurs when either the founder or leaders believe there is more alignment than there actually is or that there is only token alignment present. For example, people may agree in the presence of leaders but complain and disagree when they are absent from the room.
Misalignment is generally easy to spot and quick to resolve if you have the appetite to do so. Misalignment occurs because either the communication from the founder and/or leaders has not been good enough or frequent enough, or because you have employees who aren’t a good cultural or role fit. The solution to either issue is straightforward. In the first instance, you just need to improve your internal communications; if you still have misaligned stakeholders after that, then you must accept they aren’t a good fit and agree with them that their future lies elsewhere.
In contrast, illusional alignment is both hard to spot and takes much longer to resolve. It’s a blind spot for many founders and leaders, as they don’t want to see or believe that everyone is not fully committed to the journey; they are not looking for the signs. It’s also difficult to detect because people aren’t being honest with you. They are pretending and playing the role they think you want them to occupy, i.e., that of a loyal employee.
As leaders, we must accept that there will always be a degree of misalignment among our stakeholders. Part of our responsibility is not to eliminate this misalignment, as that is unrealistic, but to reduce it to a level where it does not impact the business's progress.
As a leader, you must be vulnerable and transparent enough to continually ask whether others are seeing what you are seeing and believing what you are believing. When done effectively, leadership is a two-way symbiotic experience involving a constant exchange of opinions and ideas. It is not about control and command but rather about conversations and co-creativity. These conversations help us understand other people's realities and experiences, while co-creativity focuses on envisioning what better could look like.
The reframe here is that blind spots remain blind spots unless you acknowledge their presence and address the root causes.
In reality, once identified, blind spots allow you to create a better organisation with greater alignment. They serve you, not hinder you.
Rethink: How can I find the reality?
Yes, you may have plenty of data to review on employee happiness, customer satisfaction, etc. Still, the one sure-fire method for uncovering reality is one-to-one conversations, ideally in person rather than virtually. There is something powerful about an in-person conversation that allows us to ask deeper questions and discover more. It enables others to tell us what we need to know instead of what we want to hear, as long as we remain curious and empathetic in how we present ourselves and the questions we ask.
So the question is: are you spending enough time conversing with a diverse group of stakeholders, and are you currently too reliant on data and other people's views to determine whether you have actual or illusory alignment in play right now?
Refocus: Act on your feelings
We are sensory beings, and if we give our senses enough attention, we can pick up cues for when there is a disconnect between what we are being told and what we are sensing.
To enable this to happen, we need to spend more time observing and less time broadcasting. " Speak least and speak last " is a mantra we encourage the leaders we work with to adopt, as it enables us to pick up on visual cues and to understand what others think before they express their view.
Yes, leadership is about interpreting the data and making strategic decisions, but it’s also about being connected with the feelings within your company if you want a high degree of alignment and the appropriate amount of ‘buy-in’ from your stakeholders.
“A lack of alignment creates confusion in messaging, decreases operational effectiveness and increases the risk of wasting valuable resources and time.”
