The biggest barriers to organizational alignment (and how to fix them)

We often treat “organizational alignment” like a buzzword — sprinkled into leadership emails, pasted on walls in open-plan offices, or tossed around in strategy decks like confetti.

But true organizational alignment isn’t empty business jargon. Or it shouldn’t be. It’s a living, breathing state of clarity and cohesion. And it’s the difference between teams that move, and teams that move together. Here’s how to master it.

What is organizational alignment?

Organizational alignment feels like every person’s work, no matter how big or small their role, contributes directly to the mission of your company.

From intern to exec, everyone knows why the company exists, the priorities that serve that purpose, and how their day-to-day work contributes to that.

It’s not just about strategy or structure (though both matter). It’s about ensuring the human engine of your organization runs in harmony, not in parallel confusion.
A story about JFK, NASA, and a janitor

During a visit to the NASA space center in the 1960s, President John F. Kennedy approached a janitor carrying a broom and introduced himself. He said, “Hi, I’m Jack Kennedy. What are you doing?”

“Well, Mr. President,” the janitor responded, “I’m helping put a man on the moon.”

This often-cited story holds a valuable lesson about how important organizational alignment still is today.

Most people probably would have answered Kennedy’s question with something like, “Just sweeping up,” and chances are, if you approach your employees/coworkers today with a similar inquiry, they’ll give you their equivalent.

The problem with answers like “sweeping up,” “answering emails,” or “updating this spreadsheet” is that most of the time, employees don’t think about how these tasks directly contribute to the success of the business.

That also means they don’t connect their everyday jobs to your company’s larger goals. The importance of this connection can’t be overstated.

When your team embraces the perspective of the NASA janitor, incredible things can happen. Teams work more effectively toward a common goal. And people are more motivated, knowing their day’s work serves a higher purpose.

Why alignment matters, and why it breaks down

“How did you go bankrupt?”

“Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”

Earnest Hemmingway, The Sun Always Rises

Misalignment doesn’t usually happen in one dramatic bang. It builds gradually — one missed message, an instruction from the boss lost in translation. Over time, these small disconnects add up to something far more damaging: stalled strategies, frustrated teams, and lost opportunities.

To fix this, first you need to understand where it comes from, and how it quietly erodes performance. Here are some common failure points.

• Disconnected strategy: Leadership sets the direction — but no one else knows where the company is going or how their work fits in. A lack of horizontal alignment (more on that below) or poor organizational communication is usually to blame.
• Role ambiguity: Employees don’t know what they own or why it matters. Gaps, overlaps, and frustration follow.
• Competing priorities: Teams chase different goals without coordination. One pushes cost savings, another pushes quality — everyone loses. Often caused by a lack of vertical alignment.
• No feedback loops: Goals are set and forgotten. Work drifts off-course, but no one checks until it’s too late.
• Siloed teams: Departments operate in isolation, causing duplicated effort, missed feedback, and clashing priorities. Often caused by a lack of horizontal alignment.

Types of alignment: vertical vs. horizontal

When talking about ‘organizational alignment’ two words often crop up: vertical and horizontal. And without both, things fall apart.

Vertical alignment is the classic top-down approach, with top-level goals filtering down. It’s a powerful way to keep everyone moving toward the same goal — no matter where they sit in the hierarchy.

Teams can be aligned vertically — but misaligned horizontally. 

But vertical alignment on its own isn’t enough. Messages passed from the top often get distorted or lost entirely, like in a game of telephone. That’s where horizontal alignment comes in.

Horizontal alignment flattens the communication structure to enable better cross-functional collaboration, helping teams avoid duplicated work and miscommunication.

Horizontal alignment gets rid of silos and improves communication between teams. 

If vertical alignment tells us where we’re going, horizontal alignment ensures we get there together — without crashing into each other.

Four more types of organizational alignment

So far, we’ve looked at organizational alignment from a structural perspective — what it is, and where it breaks down.

But alignment doesn’t succeed at the structural level alone. It only becomes real when it reaches the level of the individual. This is where the four levels of alignment come into play.

These levels describe how well employees are connected to the work they do, the people they work with, and the goals the organization is trying to achieve. If even one level is missing, alignment weakens — and productivity and motivation suffer.

1. Employee-to-role alignment

As every manager knows, finding the right person for the job is harder than it looks. And making the wrong hire costs your recruiter, manager, and team a lot of time and money. The business is affected as long as that member stays on contributing as an underperformer. And once the weak link leaves, you spend more time and resources finding a replacement and getting them up to speed.

It’s easy to see how companies can sink weeks, months, or even years to a single poor hiring decision. Total organizational alignment starts right here.

2. Employee-to-goal alignment

A quality hire can only go so far without proper goal setting. Clear expectations make it possible for employees to prioritize their work and stay on track with the rest of the company.

Managers need to set appropriate goals. They also need to use regular performance check-ins to monitor progress and make adjustments along the way.

Top tip: when it comes to setting objectives, use the SMART framework.

3. Employee-to-team alignment

For this one, you need to define and measure both short-term and long-term goals. You also need visibility across your department — it helps teammates see how their efforts fit into the bigger picture, while avoiding issues like duplicate work.

Establish a way for all team members to stay up-to-date on what others are working on. Project management tools and group messaging apps are ideal for creating transparency, so get set up with those for starters. Weekly meetings (when they are run correctly) are also a must, whether you’re in the office or remote.

4. Employee-to-organization alignment

Last but certainly not least, you need to see alignment between the employee and the wider organization.

Individual goals → team goals → big-picture organizational goals.

This is one of those things that filters down. So managers need to not just know, but express where the company is and where it’s going. Or in other words, for communicating the vision.

It’s also leadership’s job to set company-wide goals, measure and report progress, and generally reinforce company values and culture along the way.

Town Halls, company newsletters, and quarterly meetings are all good options. But no matter what the means of communication, goals and progress needs to be visible to every employee at every level.

Organizational alignment — do you have it?

Before we get into the ‘how’, let’s do some reflection. To have true organizational alignment, your business needs to consider four things:

• Purpose
• Strategy
• Resources
• Management.

Purpose

What do we do, and why do we do it? Your purpose motivates every decision you make, from the products you release to the people you hire.

Things like financial success, happy customers, and positive PR are simply byproducts of fulfilling your purpose. If you don’t understand the what and why of your work, you can’t expect your organization to either.

Can each employee, investor, and customer easily relay your purpose? If not, you’ve found an excellent opportunity to improve alignment.

If you’re unsure of your businesses purpose, ask these questions:

• How are people’s lives different because of it?
• Would the world change if your business closed doors tomorrow?
• How do others describe your business?
• What would achieving your ultimate purpose look like?

Strategy

How do we fulfill our purpose? While your purpose will likely remain constant, your strategy will adapt to current opportunities and threats in the market. Whether or not your strategy brings you closer to fulfilling your purpose will be how you measure success.

To evaluate if your strategy is adequately supporting your purpose, ask these questions:

• What are your current offerings (products, services, etc.), and how does each represent your purpose?
• Based on your current offerings, are there parts of your purpose that you aren’t currently fulfilling? What’s missing?
• Are any of your offerings not aligned with your purpose? How would you either adapt or eliminate those?
• What do your customers expect from your offerings? Are those expectations aligned with your purpose?
• How does your purpose differentiate you from competitors? Do your offerings reflect that?

Resources

What are we capable of? Your strategy means nothing without the resources and talent required to achieve it. Your resources may include the capital, materials, software, staff, and any other assets you can draw from.

To understand how your current resources are functioning, ask these questions:

• What are we great at?
• Where do we struggle?
• What do we need to be the best at to support our business strategy?
• Are our current strengths aligned with our strategy? If not, what are the most critical areas to improve? And how do we improve them?

You may identify opportunities in staffing, culture, work processes, or structure that are holding you back. Likewise, you may identify unique qualities your business thrives at that you want to preserve and prioritize.

Management

How do we manage it? Managing your resources effectively so that your team can collaborate, communicate, and deliver their work determines the longevity of your success.

You need the right management practices, systems, and technologies to help you utilize your resources in line with your strategy toward your purpose. It all connects!

In terms of management, ask these questions:

• What goals does your business have from a managerial standpoint?
• For each of those goals, what does success look like in the short term and long term?
• Are those outcomes in line with the business’s purpose?
• How is your business’s purpose not being supported managerially?
• How is your business’s strategy not being supported managerially?
• What goals could you introduce to close any gaps?

We recommend asking all of these questions, not just of yourself but of your entire team. You can direct this line of thinking towards the business overall or single out a particular offering or function.

Once you’ve evaluated your business in terms of purpose, strategy, resources, and management. It’s time to align your staff from the bottom up with the four levels of organizational alignment.

How to build organizational alignment in 5 steps

Unfortunately, organizational alignment isn’t like a string of dominos: You can’t just set them up and watch them go. You need to approach it the right way, and build alignment into the fabric of your organization. Here’s a walkthrough.

Step 1: Define and socialise your “North Star”

Before tackling teams, align leadership. Your executive team needs a shared understanding of where the organisation is going and why. That means you need to articulate a high-level goal that reflects your company’s purpose and strategic priorities.

This goal — your North Star — should be:

• Inspiring but grounded in reality
• Easy to communicate across the company
• Capable of guiding decisions at every level.

Once you’ve done this, you need to share it with everyone else. Don’t assume a single company meeting or email will do the trick. Repeat it in meetings, weave it into planning processes, and link it to metrics that people can track.

Step 2: Break down goals collaboratively

Top-down alignment doesn’t mean a dictatorship. Once you’ve set strategic direction, involve teams in getting the message out and translating it into meaningful goals. This step is where frameworks like OKRs really shine (more on that in the next section).

Team leads should work with their people to:

• Define how their work supports company goals
• Identify interdependencies with other teams
• Flag resource constraints before kick-off.

Step 3: Design structures that support alignment

Organizational alignment doesn’t happen in spite of structure. It happens because of it.

If your company is rigidly siloed, even the best strategy will struggle to take root. Consider rejigging your structure to allow for both vertical and horizontal connection.

This might mean:

• Introducing matrix-style reporting for cross-functional projects
• Creating shared planning rituals across departments
• Exploring a bottom-up approach
• Embedding “alignment leads” into key initiatives
• Define clear criteria for evaluating priorities (urgency, impact, fit with strategy)
• Create forums where competing goals can be resolved at the right level.

Step 4: Make alignment visible and measurable

Without visibility, alignment crumbles. Teams lose sight of shared goals, and individuals prioritise tasks that feel urgent rather than strategic. To avoid this, use tools and rituals that keep people on track.

That could include:

• Goal dashboards that show progress at multiple levels
• Weekly or biweekly check-ins focused on key priorities
• Shared calendars for cross-team milestones
• Regular reporting loops from teams to leadership and back
• Real-time updates in project or collaboration tools
• Honest reporting on blockers, risks, and delays.

Step 5: Reinforce the mission — constantly

People forget. Priorities shift. Day-to-day tasks pile up. If you want your team to stay aligned, you need to reinforce it constantly — not just when you’re kicking off a new initiative.

Ways to do this:

• Reference the mission in company meetings, updates, and communications
• Communicate strategic direction in practical terms
• Link project kickoffs back to strategic objectives
• Celebrate work that contributes directly to long-term goals
• Make the purpose visible — in dashboards, values, and decisions
• Lead by example and make decisions that support company goals
• Resolve conflicting priorities.

Step 6: Reflect and adjust

Alignment is dynamic rather than static. And this is where many organisations fall short: they assume once the plan is made, execution will take care of itself. Nope! It’s not enough to review goals at the end of a quarter or fiscal year. Alignment calls for regular breathers. This gives teams a chance to step back, assess where they are, and make adjustments before things snowball.

Some ways to build this into your cadence:

• Hold monthly or quarterly retrospectives tied to team or business goals
• Make sure you’re addressing issues, not sweeping them under the rug
• Host leadership reviews that look at alignment, not just performance
• Ask employees regularly: “Do you know how your work connects to the bigger picture?”
• Get managers to ask: are teams still focused on the right things? Are goals still connected to strategy?

This doesn’t have to be time-consuming. Even a short monthly review can shine a light on early signs of misalignment and give teams a chance to reset.

Useful methods and frameworks to help you get aligned

Tools don’t create alignment — but the right frameworks can make it easier to build and maintain. Here are a few that actually work when used well:

• OKRs (Objectives and Key Results)
  Set a clear goal (the objective) and 2 – 4 measurable outcomes (the key results). Great for linking strategy to execution and keeping teams focused.
• OGSM (Objectives, Goals, Strategies, Measures)
  Like OKRs but geared for long-term strategic planning. It’s useful if you need a one-page snapshot of how your business plans to deliver on its mission. A bit rigid for fast-changing environments.
• 4DX (Four Disciplines of Execution)
  Focus on the wildly important. Act on lead measures. Keep a visible scoreboard. Hold people accountable. Simple to explain, hard to stick with — requires discipline and consistency.
• McKinsey 7-S
  Strategy, structure, systems, style, staff, skills, shared values. Good for diagnosing misalignment across internal systems, especially during change. Best used with other goal-setting frameworks.
• Hoshin Kanri
  A structured approach to cascading goals from the top down. Very methodical. Great for large, complex orgs — but can feel heavy-handed if overengineered.

Use organizational alignment tools built for collaboration

True organizational alignment means your strategy, structure, and day-to-day work are all connected and moving toward the same goal. That’s where the right tools can make a big difference.

Backlog, our own project management tool, brings tasks, goals, and progress into one place so teams can see what’s happening — and why it matters. It keeps people aligned, even when priorities shift.

Pair it with Cacoo, and suddenly complex processes and roles become crystal clear. Visual diagrams make it easier for teams to understand how their work fits into the bigger picture.

Together, these tools help teams stay coordinated, adapt quickly, and stay true to what really matters. For small businesses trying to grow without losing focus, that’s not just helpful — it’s game-changing. Give both a try for free today!

This post was originally published on January 30, 2021, and updated most recently on July 25, 2025.