The Illusion of Alignment in Scaling Brands.

Alignment is often celebrated as consensus.
It shouldn’t be.

As organisations grow, agreement becomes a proxy for clarity. Meetings end with nods. Documents circulate. Everyone feels heard. Yet decisions drift.

Alignment without direction is performance.
It creates comfort, not coherence.

True alignment requires something harder: clear boundaries. Clear trade-offs. Clear decisions that not everyone agrees with.

Brands fracture not because teams disagree, but because nothing is precise enough to disagree with.

Alignment is not the absence of conflict.
It is the presence of direction.