When Agreement Isn’t Enough: The Misalignment Most Exec Teams Miss

There is a moment I see over and over again inside leadership teams.

Everyone leaves the meeting feeling good.
The conversation was respectful.
The strategy sounded clear.
Heads nodded. Notes were taken.

And yet, weeks later, execution tells a very different story.

Projects miss deadlines.
Decisions come back onto the agenda.
Teams start working around each other instead of together.

This is the most consistent issue I see across leadership teams. Not conflict. Not dysfunction. Misalignment.

Misalignment happens when a team believes they agree, but when it is time to act, they do not take the same actions.

I often explain it this way. A team agrees to go to New York on Tuesday. Everyone says yes. Tuesday arrives. One person is in Harlem. Another is in Chelsea. Another is in Midtown. It is Tuesday. Everyone is technically in New York. But they are not in the same place.

That is what misalignment looks like inside organizations. Leaders agree on the goal, but teams take different paths, follow different priorities, and move at different speeds.

And the cost of that gap shows up faster than most leaders expect.

The Cost of Misalignment Shows Up in Results

Research consistently shows that alignment at the senior level predicts whether organizations hit their targets.

BCG has found that transformations where senior leaders align early succeed at much higher rates. McKinsey has shown that organizations with aligned leadership teams are more likely to meet financial and operational goals. Deloitte’s research shows that decision speed increases when teams are clear on who decides, who executes, and what happens when priorities conflict.

Despite this evidence, most leadership teams assume alignment exists once a decision is announced.

It does not.

What looks like agreement in the room often hides unanswered questions, unresolved concerns, and unclear ownership. Those gaps surface later as rework, delays, and quiet second-guessing. By the time leaders notice the impact, timelines have slipped and confidence has eroded.

Agreement Is Not the Same as Readiness

At The October Group, we talk about two different kinds of agreement.

There is surface agreement.
And there is agreement to execute.

Surface agreement keeps meetings calm. It allows teams to move on to the next agenda item.

Agreement to execute requires clarity about who owns what, what comes first, what can wait, and what happens if conditions change. It requires leaders to say out loud where they disagree, what could break, and how they will respond when it does.

Most teams skip this step. Not because they lack discipline. Because calendars are full, pressure is high, and slowing down feels risky.

In practice, skipping alignment is what causes teams to lose the most time.

Why Traditional Approaches No Longer Hold

Many leadership teams have relied on strategy decks, scorecards, and goals to drive performance. Those tools still matter. But on their own, they do not hold teams together once priorities shift or people change roles.

Organizations now face frequent leadership turnover, midyear strategy changes, and constant external pressure. Static plans break the moment conditions change.

What holds is not the plan. It is whether the leadership team knows how to make decisions together when things move.

At The October Group, our work is grounded in how leaders actually behave day to day. How they decide. How they handle disagreement. How they adjust when assumptions no longer match reality.

Our goal is simple. We help leaders reach the outcomes they want. But we also stop long enough to test whether those outcomes still make sense.

Is this direction based on information that is no longer current?

Are there decisions you avoided because they felt uncomfortable?

Is this where your team will want to be six months from now, not just at the end of the quarter?

Many leaders realize they have been moving quickly toward a future they never paused to question.

What We Look At First

When leaders ask us how aligned their team is, we do not start with opinions. We start with observable patterns.

Across industries, the same factors predict whether teams execute well under pressure:

• Do leaders make decisions using the same values, or do they interpret values differently when tradeoffs appear?
• How does the team respond when someone disagrees publicly?
• Are tough conversations happening in the room, or afterward in smaller meetings?
• Do leaders describe the future using the same priorities and timelines?
• When pressure rises, does the team coordinate, or does each function protect its own goals?

Teams that examine these areas reduce rework, shorten decision cycles, and spend less time correcting misunderstandings.

Aligned teams make decisions once and move forward. Misaligned teams revisit the same decisions multiple times.

That drag spreads quickly. Teams feel it in meetings, in morale, and in turnover long before it shows up in financial reports.

As Brené Brown reminds us, clear is kind. Clear expectations prevent confusion and reduce friction.

Saying the Quiet Part Out Loud

One question I often ask leaders is simple. What is your superpower?

For me, it comes down to three things.

I trust my intuition.

I listen with my whole body. I notice what is said, what is avoided, and what changes when certain topics come up.

And I reflect that information back in a way leaders can act on immediately.

Insight without action does not help teams perform.

There is one more truth executives rarely enjoy hearing. The higher you rise, the fewer unfiltered signals reach you. Not because people intend to hide information, but because it gets softened as it moves upward.

Unless leaders create conditions where concerns can surface early, they end up making decisions based on partial information.

Hope is not a strategy.

Alignment is not about everyone agreeing. It is about leaders committing to the same actions, the same priorities, and the same follow-through.

When teams get that right, execution changes quickly and predictably.