Every CEO wants to hear it. Leadership teams trot it out with a smile. It reassures investors and calms boardrooms.

And yet…alignment is the fat word that wrecks program execution.

It’s bloated with meanings and stretched elastic to cover multiple agendas. For one exec, it means loyalty. For another, it means silence. For a third, it means hitting their Long Term Incentive Plan (LTIP).

CEOs hear it and think it means unity. In practice, it means everything – and nothing.

Here’s how I learned that lesson up close.

The Setup

A major telecoms company, fresh out of near-bankruptcy, launched a bold turnaround. Twenty-six initiatives were pitched to investors – new services, new platforms, new revenue streams. Expectations soared.

Four months later, the CEO ran a checkpoint review on progress. His verdict: “we are nowhere.”

Staff cuts had been made, but the initiatives still looked like a medieval map of Europe – blank spaces, vague borders, dragons at the edges.

An Independent Program Review (IPR) confirmed the gap.

The Intervention

Mentor was brought in to help the CEO to drive the struggling change agenda, which was both ambitious and urgent. There was no time to waste – not a moment to lose.

After four weeks of hard graft, we cut 28 initiatives down to five business-critical programs, each with clear accountability and executable plans. The clutter was gone. Focus had returned.

Most of the leadership team welcomed the change.

But one senior executive did not: Malcolm Vane, the CTO.

The Smiling Assassin

Vane knew we were coming. He’d already checked us out with some of our clients (who kindly warned us) and was preparing to frustrate the CEO’s agenda weeks before we arrived.

He even engaged a top-tier consultancy to give himself a head start, sitting in on practically every middle-management briefing.

He was clearly intent on implementing his own program plan, attempting to sabotage our efforts before we even got started.

It was unnecessary, paranoid – and ironic, because the CEO had little time for Big 4 frameworks. He wanted sleeves rolled up and delivery, not another glossy framework.

Vane’s problem was simple: control.

He wanted advisors he could bend to his will, not an independent team reporting directly to the CEO.

He wanted blind loyalty, not independent judgment. And he knew his “plans” were anorexic – exposure was inevitable.

Outwardly, he was the model of calm thoughtfulness. Pauses, nods, carefully weighed words.

He would never say anything in front of the CEO or the senior leadership team (SLT) that could be interpreted as anything other than full support for our plan.

In reality, those pauses, nods, and carefully weighed words weren’t insight and thoughtfulness, but damage limitation. A well-rehearsed stage act.

Privately, it was very different. He:

·  Instructed staff to do the minimum, under threat of redundancy, poor appraisals and zero pay increases.

·  Consumed management time with endless “alternative” plans.

·  Maintained a facade of “alignment” while quietly protecting his turf.

Many on the SLT deferred to him, intimidated by his technical mystique. He used that muscle in sidebar conversations to quietly undermine their stated support for our approach.

Only the HR Director saw through it.

Managers in his team confided in us privately: they wanted to see big changes but felt powerless to disagree with him.

Our execution team could eat him for breakfast on substance. But we weren’t insiders. We weren’t part of the LTIP club – Long Term Incentive Plan.

Too much of our time was spent spiking his guns – neutralising obstacles, working around rearguard actions, just to keep progress alive.

The Confidence Check

Two months in, the CFO asked us for a confidence rating for the shareholders on delivery by late summer.

Given where the company was, our answer was: 20%.

The gap between Vane’s forecasts and reality wasn’t weeks – it was 9 to 12 months. And even that wasn’t a sure thing. His “reliable” estimates were make-believe.

One plan had services launching the day after development finished – no testing, no trials, just straight to customers.

A bold strategy – if your ambition is to win the “Darwin Award for Program Management.”

He would have been found out eventually. We just surfaced the truth before he could rewrite it.

The Corrosive Cost

·  Wasted time: senior leaders firefighting politics, not progress.

·  Distracted leadership: CEO and CFO forced into referee roles.

·  Eroded trust: teams torn between loyalty and delivery.

·  Fear-driven culture: staff complying just enough to protect careers.

All because one self-centred executive wanted to run his own personal transformation program and couldn’t accept losing influence.

The Illusion of Alignment

One SLT member told me proudly: “We’re so aligned you couldn’t slide a sheet of paper between us.”

And they were right – because the only thing they were aligned on was their Long-Term Incentive Plan.

That’s the problem. Alignment is a “fat” word.

It sounds lean and precise, but it’s bloated and elastic. For one leader, it means loyalty. For another, silence. For a third, money.

CEOs hear it and think it means unity.

In practice, it means nothing at all.

What CEOs Should Do Instead

Probe behaviours, not words

·  Smiles and nods cost nothing. Real alignment shows up in budgets, headcount, delivery choices.

Break the monopoly of knowledge

·  If one exec is treated like the High Priest of Technology, expect rituals and incantations, not delivery.

·  Colleagues defer – as if stone tablets were being handed down – even when the text is gibberish.

·  Bring in independent expertise, so challenge is based on fact, not faith.

Surface the elephants

·  Silence does not mean consensus. Better a messy debate early than submarine sabotage later.

Protect the staff who want to deliver

·  Never force staff to choose between their careers and the program. Guess which one they’ll pick?

Interrogate incentives

·  If the only thing leaders are aligned on is the LTIP, you don’t have alignment. You have a “conspiracy of convenience”.

Use independent reviews

·  Don’t wait for the smiling assassin to write his own report card. Get the facts early.

Reflection

The hardest barriers in transformation aren’t technical. They’re human.

Even one “territorial” executive can waste months of effort, corrode morale, and slow recovery.

The lesson: don’t be fooled by the word “alignment.”

It sounds like progress. But too often, it’s camouflage – bloated, elastic, and meaningless.

At best, it’s the smiling assassin’s favourite disguise. At worst, it’s the LTIP dressed up as strategy.

CEOs aren’t powerless. With the right structures and scrutiny, they can turn alignment from a fat word into a real force for delivery. But only if they stop treating it like scripture – and start testing it like evidence.

Question for CEOs: When your team tells you they’re “aligned,” do you know what they really mean? Or are you just hearing a fat word?

About the author

David Hilliard is founder of Mentor, specialists in strategic program execution.

You can call him on 0118 359 2444 or email david.hilliard@mentoreurope.com.