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Alignment is one of the most used and least understood concepts in engineering leadership. We say it’s critical, we hold meetings to get it, and we celebrate it in performance reviews. But if we’re really aligned, why do we keep needing more “alignment” meetings?
After a year of obsessing over this concept, I’ve come to believe that most alignment work is actually just anti-misalignment: a reactive attempt to avoid conflict, surprises, or churn. It’s alignment by damage control.
In this talk, I’ll reframe alignment as a form of group flow, a state where everyone knows where we are, where we’re going, and how we’ll navigate tradeoffs along the way. I’ll share a simple model that explains why misalignment feels so painful (and so obvious), and why real alignment isn’t a meeting, it’s a shared sense of direction, context, and trust. We’ll look at the difference between alignment and agreement, explore some dangerously common anti-misalignment patterns, and walk through lightweight strategies you can use today to improve clarity and autonomy across your team.
Whether you’re a Staff+ IC, a manager, or a tech lead, this talk offers a vocabulary and lens for the invisible cultural friction that slows teams down and a more proactive way forward
Key takeaways:
- “Alignment” is a rarely useful concept as it can mean everything and nothing all at the same time
- Misalignment is one of the most painful and visceral forces in an organization
- Most “”alignment”” work is actually driven by the fear of misalignment
- What true proactive and productive alignment looks like
- Strategies to tease out true alignment against the background of “Anti-misalignment”
