Leadership Alignment Check · 3 weeks · about 2 hours per executive
Your team agrees in the meeting. Then everyone leaves and does something different.Find out in three weeks whether your executive team is actually aligned, and what it is costing you.
Misalignment at the top rarely looks like a fight. More often it looks like conflict avoidance: decisions that get re-litigated, meetings that never quite drive change, and a team that agrees in the room and diverges after it. Everyone has the best intentions. Each leader just has their own view of how to execute, and nobody has said so out loud.
There is no downside to checking. At worst, you confirm your team is aligned.
Sound familiar?
Six signs your leadership team is not as aligned as it thinks.
You do not need all six. One is enough to be worth three weeks.
- Nobody disagrees in the room. Or they do, and nothing gets decided.Quiet is not the same as aligned. Healthy teams challenge each other, with some real tension, and leave with a decision everyone holds.
- The same decision keeps getting re-litigated.It was settled in the leadership meeting. It came back in the ops review. It is on the agenda again next week.
- Your VPs are getting conflicting signals about priorities.Ask three executives for the top three priorities and you get five answers. Their teams are building sprints against all of them.
- People nod in the room and rework the plan in 1:1s afterward.The real meeting happens after the meeting. Hallway consensus replaces the one that was supposed to happen at the table.
- Leaders describe the customer, the journey, or who owns what slightly differently.Marketing qualifies against one definition, sales works another, and customer success inherits whatever got through.
- The CEO is carrying it alone.Decisions route through one person because the team has not agreed on who decides what. Everything waits, and the CEO is the bottleneck nobody names.
What it costs
At $30M in revenue, misalignment at the top can easily cost $3M a year.
That is my estimate from the companies I have done this with, and it is conservative. Here is where it shows up.
Direct costs
- Payroll spent on redundant work, abandoned projects and overlapping tasks
- Failed senior hires, brought in to fix a problem the team had not agreed on
- Customer churn and lower revenue when what sales promised and what the company delivers diverge
Indirect costs
- Execution lag as leaders referee cross-functional disputes and revisit settled choices
- Longer sales cycles as messaging and product reality drift apart
- Sprints pointed at different priorities by teams in silos
- Talent frustration, and the churn that follows it
How it works
Three weeks. About two hours from each executive. One honest readout.
01
Listen, privately
A confidential one-on-one with every member of the leadership team, plus a short survey. People tell me what they have not said in the room. Nothing is attributed.
02
Read the evidence
The plans, priorities and numbers each function is actually working from, compared side by side. Misalignment usually shows up in the documents before anyone admits it in conversation.
03
The readout
Where the team is aligned, where it is not, what that is costing, and what to decide first. Patterns, never who said what. Delivered to the CEO, then to the team.
04
Decide, together
A facilitated working session where the team names the disagreement out loud, argues it productively against a shared goal, and leaves with one plan everyone will hold. Disagree, discuss, decide, commit.
Then, if you want it: an operating rhythm that keeps you aligned, with a monthly check-in, so it does not decay. Many teams keep me on as a standing facilitator and coach after the first session.
Who brings me in
Usually one of three people.
The CEO or founder
Who senses the team is not pulling together but cannot see it from the inside, and who is tired of being the one every decision routes through. An outside party with no horse in the race can say what the room cannot.
The PE operating partner
Who has a new leadership team, or a plan that assumes a growth rate, and wants an independent read on whether the executives are aligned enough to deliver it before the next board meeting.
The new CRO or COO
Who inherited a team with history, and wants to know where the real disagreements are before building a plan on top of them.
FAQ
Questions leaders ask about the Alignment Check.
What is a Leadership Alignment Check?
A three-week engagement that answers one question: is your executive team actually aligned on the mission, the top three priorities, who the customer is, and who owns what? It takes about two hours from each member of the leadership team, in confidential one-on-one conversations plus a short survey, and ends in a readout that says whether and where the team is misaligned, what it is costing, and a facilitated session to close the gaps.
We get along fine. Do we still need this?
Getting along is often the symptom. Teams that never disagree in the room are usually disagreeing in hallways and 1:1s afterward, and each function quietly runs its own plan. Healthy leadership teams argue, productively, and leave with a decision everyone holds. If your meetings are pleasant and nothing changes, that is exactly the pattern the check is built to surface.
What does misalignment actually cost?
Direct costs: payroll spent on redundant and abandoned work, failed senior hires, customer churn when sales promises and delivery reality diverge. Indirect: execution lag as leaders referee cross-functional disputes, longer sales cycles, sprints pointed at different priorities, and talent frustration. My estimate from the companies I have done this with: at $30M in revenue, misalignment at the top can easily cost $3M a year.
What do you need from us?
About two hours from each executive, split between a confidential one-on-one and a short survey, plus the plans and numbers each function is actually working from. A point of contact who can get the calendar time. That is it. The check is deliberately light so it can happen alongside the day job.
Is it confidential?
Yes. What each executive tells me stays with me. The readout reports patterns and gaps, never who said what. That is why people tell me things they have not said in the room, and why the readout lands differently than an internal survey.
What happens after the readout?
A facilitated working session where the team names the disagreement out loud, argues it against a shared goal, decides, and leaves with one plan it will hold. Then, if you want it, an operating rhythm that keeps you aligned, with a monthly check-in, so it does not decay. Many teams continue with me as a standing facilitator and coach after the first session.
How is this different from an offsite or a team-building exercise?
An offsite starts from what people are willing to say in front of each other. The check starts from what they will say privately, with evidence from the plans and numbers each function is actually using. You walk in to the session already knowing where the gaps are, so the time goes to deciding rather than discovering.
Is it included in the Revenue System Readout?
Yes. Every Revenue System Readout includes the Leadership Alignment Check, because a system fix the leadership team does not agree on does not survive the quarter. You can also run the check on its own.
Check your team’s alignment.
Tell me a little about your leadership team and what feels stuck. Thirty minutes is enough to know whether the check is the right first move.
Book an alignment conversation
Or leave a note here and I will come back to you within a business day.