Insights
The Cost of Corporate Alignment Meetings
I sat in an “alignment meeting” last week that was called to align on the outcomes of a previous alignment meeting. That’s not a joke. That’s a Tuesday. Here’s what “alignment” really means in most companies: nobody wants to make the decision, so everyone agrees to meet again.
McKinsey surveyed over 1,200 managers and found that executives spend 40% of their time making decisions — and 61% say most of that time is ineffective. At a typical Fortune 500, that translates to 530,000 days of wasted manager time per year. $250 million gone. Not on bad decisions — on the process of avoiding them. The worst part? McKinsey also found that across dozens of organizations, 40% of people involved in any given decision meeting contributed zero value. Not because they’re incompetent — because they didn’t need to be there. They were invited because excluding them would be “misalignment.”
Productivity Theatre at its most elegant
This is Productivity Theatre at its most elegant. “Alignment” is the corporate word for cowardice. It sounds collaborative. Inclusive. Strategic. But what it actually means is:
- No one owns the decision
- Everyone gets veto power
- The meeting exists so failure is distributed
- Another meeting gets scheduled to “close the loop”
The decision itself takes 30 seconds of courage
Here’s the irony: AI can surface the data, model the scenarios, and draft the recommendation in minutes. The decision itself takes 30 seconds of courage. But courage doesn’t have a calendar invite. So we schedule another alignment session instead.
That’s not misalignment
The companies that win aren’t the ones with the best alignment processes. They’re the ones brave enough to say: “I’ll decide. If I’m wrong, I’ll own it.” That’s not misalignment. That’s leadership.