Most leaders believe alignment comes from clear direction.  As a consequence, they structure tightly around that.  Set the strategy.  Communicate it well. Reinforce it consistently.  And execution should follow.

But that’s not what actually drives alignment. 

Alignment is shaped in the thousands of decisions made when the leader isn’t in the room.  And those decisions are not driven by strategy alone.  They’re driven by how the strategy is interpreted.

Every team is already interpreting your strategy. The question is whether they’re doing it consistently.  

They understand the strategy, but each team applies this through the lens of the work they do. This requires them to decide what the strategy means at a much greater level of detail than the strategy ever defined.   

A strategy might say: retain customers and grow share of wallet. It might clearly explain what this means and how it’s achieved.  Functional leaders then cascade this into their own context, translating it into the language and the decisions of their teams.

From there, the work takes shape. The marketing team, for example, makes decisions every day in pursuit of this objective.  A customer event agenda. Marketing copy. Packaging plans. All aligned, in intent, to growing share of wallet.

But the strategy doesn’t speak to these decisions at that level of detail. So capable teams do what they’re meant to do. They get on with the work. And in doing so, they fill in the blanks. They interpret.  

These are rational decisions based on local context. They happen quickly, under pressure and across teams where there are constant hand-offs. Without a shared interpretation, choices inevitably become inconsistent. Teams don’t just execute differently. They optimise in different directions. And over time, that inconsistency compounds.

What looks like alignment at the top often becomes variation at the point of execution, because each team is applying its own logic to the same direction.  

What needs to be managed more than execution is interpretation.  Execution isn’t controlled by strategy. It’s controlled by how that strategy is interpreted in daily decisions.

This is the distance between the strategy and the decisions made every day. Leaders shorten this distance by defining what good looks like at the level that decisions happen.  Not just in principle, but in practice.  

What should be prioritised when trade-off appear.

What good execution actually looks like.

Where teams can flex, and where they are expected to hold the line.

This brings the strategy closer to the work. It makes it operational. 

This isn’t handed down to teams. It’s shaped by the work itself.  As teams make decisions and test them, leaders refine the interpretation. Over time, individuals don’t just understand the strategy. They know how to apply it.

And that’s when alignment start to hold. Over time, a shared reference point is built. Strategy sets direction. Interpretation determines the performance of what gets done.

Alignment isn’t something you arrive at.  It’s something you create and preserve.

It’s created in how your strategy is interpreted in the decisions made every day, by every individual, when no one is watching.

This is part of a broader theme of alignment explored in The Drift You Don’t See