Teams Aren’t Broken, But Here’s Why It Feels Like It
Teams aren’t broken; they’re just not aligned enough.
Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time inside leadership team offsites, retreats, and trainings across different industries. They have different mixes of personalities and seniority levels and wildly different mandates. And yet, I keep seeing the same pattern.
There are many things that are working: they’re hitting targets; decisions are being made; to-do lists are getting done. But underneath, there’s friction. It's not loud, dramatic conflict (usually). It’s often a quieter kind that’s easier to ignore and much harder to fix. It shows up as:
People talking past each other in meetings
Endless debates that don’t seem to land on anything specific or actionable
Decisions that need to be revisited again
A lack of real traction, even when everyone is working so hard
Leaders leaving conversations with different interpretations of what was just decided
This isn’t a talent issue; these are smart, capable individuals. It’s an alignment issue. And it’s not just a lack of alignment on what matters, it’s a lack of alignment on when it matters, how fast to move, and how to make decisions when priorities inevitably compete.
Most teams think they are aligned, until something tests it, or priorities or values compete, or they have to have a difficult conversation, or make a hard decision. The cost of this is rarely measured, but it shows up everywhere. We see it in lost time through reworking or re-discussing, in decisions that don't stick, in feelings that get hurt, and in subtle erosion of trust and credibility. This is where good strategies quietly fail, not in the big moments, but in the small inconsistencies.
The teams that navigate this well are clearer than most on a few things:
what actually matters, and in what order; how and when decisions get made; how each person acts and reacts under pressure; how they show up with each other when things get hard, not just when things are easy.
If you lead a team, it’s worth pausing to ask:
If I asked each member of my team to name our top three priorities, would I get the same answer?
When we debate, are we genuinely exploring ideas, or subtly defending positions, or worse, are we disengaging?
When tension shows up, do we address it, or move around it?
Are our values actually guiding decisions, or just describing who we hope to be?
The answers to these questions tell you a lot. If you’re not actively and intentionally looking at these things together, you might be missing an opportunity for alignment. And once a year isn’t enough. Because even the best strategy won't survive without alignment behind it.
This isn't complicated, but it does require both intention and attention. The funny thing is that teams that do make the time to do this are often surprised by how much time they save, and how much easier everything else becomes. But most teams don’t do it, not because it isn’t important, but because it’s rarely urgent. Until it is.
And by then, the cost is already higher than most leaders expected.
What is the cost of the misalignment you’re currently tolerating, and is it higher than you think?