False Alignment: The Executive Trap Harming Growth

Boston Consulting Group tracked nearly 2,000 public companies worldwide over a 20-year period and uncovered striking figures showing that over 70% of firms experiencing a downturn failed to match the average performance of industry competitors during the one and five years that followed. Over this same timeframe, the global economy rapidly digitized, successfully decoded the human genome, and engineered autonomous vehicles, yet organizations remained entirely stagnant in one specific area: getting a group of people to successfully change how they work together.

This challenge is far from new. Back in 1993, Michael Hammer, the pioneer of business process reengineering, wrote in Reengineering the Corporation that roughly 50% to 70% of organizations undertaking systemic overhauls never achieved their intended outcomes, and three decades later, those numbers have barely moved. An article titled The False Alignment Trap in the Harvard Business Review by Julia Dhar, Kristy R. Ellmer, and Philip Jameson from Boston Consulting Group highlights that the root of the problem originates in the boardroom, where executive teams frequently fall into the trap of acting as though they are fully aligned on upcoming transformations when they actually disagree completely.

Every corporate transformation initiative requires addressing three critical questions clearly: why change, what to change and what not to change, and how to execute the change. A frequent mistake is initiating execution before everyone achieves true consensus on these three points. The underlying issue hides behind the word alignment, which fundamentally differs from actual agreement. The former merely suggests objects lined up along the same path or facing the same direction. When executives claim alignment, it typically just means nobody is standing in the way. However, organizational transformation demands rigorous collaboration, mutual compromise, and explicit communication. Leaders satisfied with mere alignment ultimately find it insufficient, leading authors to coin the term False Alignment, whereas leaders willing to negotiate until reaching a detailed, documented True Agreement can truly collaborate and hold each other accountable.

Stock photo for illustration only, not from the actual event

A prime example involved a North American energy distribution company where the CEO invited consultants to prepare the business for a sale, insisting that all executives already agreed on necessary changes. The first question tested clarity on how the new business would differ from the past, with 10 out of 13 executives responding that it was clear or very clear. The next question asked how aligned the team felt on the matter, yielding 8 out of 13 affirmative answers. The turning point arrived with the final question, asking each person to write down how the new company would look different. The responses scattered in completely different directions, with one writing that systems would grow larger and more complex while workflows remained identical, another viewing the change as competing independently without a parent company, and a third anticipating entirely new assets, markets, cost structures, and leadership. If these individuals had returned to direct their teams based on these separate interpretations, each department would have drifted significantly off course.