Revenue misalignment rarely announces itself in dramatic fashion. It does not typically begin with blown forecasts or visible dysfunction between sales and marketing. More often, it embeds itself quietly into the daily operating rhythm of the organization.
Deals continue to close. Dashboards remain defensible. Quarterly targets are still within reach. From the outside, the system appears to be functioning. But functioning is not the same as being well designed.
When alignment gaps exist, something has to absorb the friction. In most mid-market organizations, that burden falls on people. Over time, teams take on unplanned work to compensate for structural weaknesses in the revenue engine. That work is subtle, often invisible, and rarely discussed at the executive level.
This is shadow work and it is often the clearest evidence that the misalignment tax is already being paid.
How Shadow Work Takes Root
Shadow work emerges when the system fails to consistently carry alignment forward. Sales gathers its own account and buyer insight because shared context does not reliably travel between functions. Reporting requires manual reconciliation before leadership meetings because definitions and data governance are not fully aligned. High performers step in to repair handoffs that no single team explicitly owns. Individually, these moments feel manageable. Collectively, they reveal a pattern.
The cost does not appear on a balance sheet, yet it is very real. Time is diverted. Cognitive load increases. Managerial energy is spent maintaining coherence rather than improving performance. Over time, this compensatory effort becomes normalized. It stops feeling like a workaround and starts feeling like the way the organization operates. This normalization is what makes it harder to even see the tax. Misalignment rarely reduces revenue overnight. Instead, it increases invisible labor until that labor becomes embedded in the operating model itself.
Why Leaders Often Miss It
Shadow work protects short-term outcomes. When teams absorb friction, performance remains stable enough to avoid alarm. Forecasts can still be explained. Pipeline coverage appears sufficient. Targets are achievable, even if they require more effort than they should. As a result, leadership attention stays focused on output rather than infrastructure.
The organization adapts around the flaw instead of correcting it. Workarounds evolve into habits, and habits harden into expectations. Over time, risk concentrates in individuals rather than systems. A small group of capable leaders and operators becomes responsible for holding the revenue engine together. If those individuals leave, burn out, or simply reach capacity, the fragility becomes visible. By then, redesign is more disruptive and more politically complex than it would have been earlier. By the time the numbers raise concern, the cost has usually been building for a while.
If shadow work exists inside your revenue team, your operating model is relying on human compensation to function. That may feel sustainable in the short term, especially if you have strong operators, but it rarely scales well. It increases dependency on top performers, concentrates risk, and delays structural decisions until they become reactive rather than strategic. Ignoring shadow work does not preserve stability. It postpones redesign.
What This Means in Practice
You do not need a major initiative to begin assessing whether shadow work is embedded in your organization. In your next revenue leadership discussion, pay attention to where someone is “just stepping in” to keep work moving. Notice where reporting requires manual cleanup before it can be trusted. Listen for inconsistencies in how readiness, qualification, or handoff standards are described across teams. If these moments feel routine rather than exceptional, they are likely structural.
Shadow work rarely appears dramatic in isolation. It surfaces in small compensations that seem reasonable at the time. Taken together, however, they reveal whether your revenue engine is aligned by design or being sustained by effort. And wherever effort is compensating for structure, the misalignment tax is already embedded.
If this was useful, forward it to a colleague who would benefit from rethinking how sales and marketing align to drive sustainable growth.
Until next week,
Jeff
RevEngine™ | Built for Revenue Leaders Driving Alignment and Growth—Together.
