Most revenue leaders try to fix alignment by starting with aligning sales and marketing strategy. The intent is right, but it’s the wrong starting point.
Strategic alignment is often treated as a prerequisite for execution, when it’s really an indicator of whether the organization is capable of executing together at all. Agreement on direction doesn’t produce coordinated behavior unless the operating conditions already support it. That sequencing mistake is why alignment efforts feel rational on paper and fragile in practice.
Strategic alignment is a weak coordination mechanism
Alignment conversations can create clarity, but clarity alone doesn’t produce coordination. Coordination requires stable decision rights, durable ownership, and shared definitions that hold when priorities collide. Alignment meetings rarely create those conditions. They assume them.
As a result, alignment holds only as long as nothing tests it. The moment tradeoffs appear, teams revert to how the organization is actually designed to operate, not what was agreed in the room. This is why alignment often looks intact in planning cycles and breaks during execution.
Most alignment failures are governance failures
When leaders see alignment break down, they often respond by increasing communication. So the playbook becomes more meetings, more decks, and more dashboards.
That response treats alignment as a communication problem when it is usually a governance problem. Governance in this context is not bureaucracy. It’s decision clarity:
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Who owns the call when teams disagree
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What rules apply to handoffs and exceptions
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What happens when metrics conflict
In other words, strategic alignment is being used to compensate for missing operating clarity. The conversation is doing work the system should already be doing.
This isn’t a people problem. It’s a business design problem.
Readiness determines whether alignment sticks
Every organization has an execution bias baked into its structure. Some are designed to optimize functions independently, others to coordinate across functions, and most believe they do the latter while operating as the former.
In organizations where incentives, accountability, and escalation paths are locally optimized, alignment depends on goodwill and effort. It works when things are calm and breaks under pressure.
In organizations where decision ownership and definitions are enforced systemically, alignment shows up without requiring constant reinforcement.
This is why strategic alignment is a downstream outcome. It reflects whether the organization is ready to execute together, not whether it has agreed on direction.
The sequencing insight leaders miss
When alignment is treated as the starting point of a transformation, the burden shifts to people to behave against the system they work in. Start with readiness instead, and alignment becomes the natural result of how work is designed to move.
That distinction changes how leaders diagnose alignment problems and where they intervene.
Effort is rarely the constraint. Design usually is.
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
