Alignment Is a Practice, Not a Destination: Zora Artis on Leading

Let's maybe pivot to that alignment word.

You brought it up a few times already, but how would you define alignment? And maybe what do leaders and organizations most often mistake for alignment?

Alignment is one of those words that's become a buzzword.

It's bandied about and people have different interpretations of it.

In fact, in the last study that I did with my colleague, which we released earlier this year, looking at strategic alignment and leadership, it became obvious that alignment is misunderstood, strategic alignment in particular.

And in shorthand, I would describe it as alignment is moving as one, as one whole.

And that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone thinks the same way, agrees on everything or behaves differently.

It means that there's enough shared clarity and commitment about where they're going and why and for that to flow into the decisions, the priorities, the trade-offs, the resourcing and the work that people actually do.

So it has to connect up and it's not just about looking at how that works just within the organisation, so through the organisation, it's also across organisations.

through customers and stakeholders.

So there's an external element as well as an internal element.

And the most common misconception about alignment is that it means agreement.

And it's become very much more spoken about, particularly on LinkedIn.

You're seeing all sorts of people now talking about alignment whilst we're I did the first study with my colleague back in 2018.

It was literally the first global study on strategic alignment at the time.

But now it's becoming much more commonplace and spoken about because people assume it means agreement.

People see people in a room, say it's an executive team or even just within any team, and people are nodding.

in the room or they say they agree or there's this or potentially there's even silence.

So it looks like you've got harmony and people are in agreement.

So then there's the assumption that there's alignment.

But what often happens more often than not is that people walk out with a different interpretation.

of what they think was the agreement or whatever the decision is.

They walk out with different interpretations on what's decided and what that actually means to them.

So someone who's, say, a CFO will look at a decision and they'll see it from their lens as a CFO.

A CMO will look at it from a marketing perspective, a general counsel from the risk or legal perspective.