Misalignment Isn’t a People Problem — It’s a Design Problem

Most companies think misalignment comes from communication issues or personalities.

But misalignment has very little to do with people.

It’s a design flaw.

You’ll know the feeling: everyone in the same meeting, nodding at the same sentence… yet somehow solving completely different problems.

Efficiency.

Speed.

Customer truth.

Emotional leftovers from the last failed project.

Same conversation.

Four directions.

Zero traction.

And the usual fix?

“Let’s talk more.”

“Let’s run another alignment workshop.”

No.

Talking harder doesn’t realign a misaligned system.

It’s like a car pulling to the left and deciding the solution is a better chat with the passenger.

Misalignment doesn’t explode. It leaks.

You see it in:

• Meetings that go nowhere

• Teams working hard but not together

• Priorities shifting by function

• Strategy dissolving as it moves through layers

This isn’t a behavioural issue.

It’s structural.

People aren’t misaligned.

The architecture is.

Like a fisherman casting into the wrong direction of a fully stocked lake —

great skill, wrong orientation.

So what do you actually do about it?

If misalignment is a design problem, then the solution isn’t motivation.

It’s redesign.

Here are five moves that change everything:

1. Align the logic, not the slogans

If leaders can’t describe the strategy the same way, everything else breaks.

Start with one question:

“What problem are we solving?”

2. Redesign decision flow

Misalignment hides inside decisions — who makes them, how, and how fast.

If every decision requires a meeting, you have governance theatre, not alignment.

3. Make priorities binary

Not pillars. Not themes.

Binary.

This matters now. This doesn’t.

Clarity accelerates.

Ambiguity drags.

4. Create one operating rhythm

If every function runs its own cadence, you get calendar chaos.

One rhythm → shared momentum.

5. Make the right behaviour the easy behaviour

Don’t push people to behave differently.

Build a system where the right behaviour is the default.

When design supports clarity, alignment stops needing heroics.

The real truth:

Fix the system → people rise.

Leave the system untouched → nothing moves.

Because misalignment was never a people issue.

It was always a design issue.