Common pitfalls leaders face when creating alignment:

• Definition of alignment: Varies among individuals based on their experiences.
• Strategic understanding: Importance of knowing why a task is strategically important.
• Role clarity: Everyone should understand their contribution to the desired outcomes.
• Key barriers: Misalignment in vision and strategy, shaky planning, misaligned incentives, and emotional challenges in decision-making.

Balancing diverse viewpoints and common goals:

• Shared understanding: Ensuring everyone understands the outcomes and actions agreed upon.
• Healthy discourse: Encouraging evidence-based discussions without fear of social pressure.
• Psychological safety: Creating a safe environment for proposing ideas and viewpoints.
• Learning culture: Emphasizing learning from failures and supporting open communication.

Simplifying complex messages:

• Repetition: Necessary for messages to sink in, especially in larger organizations.
• Cartoon clarity: Boiling messages down to simple, clear points that can be quickly understood.
• Multi-channel communication: Using various mediums to reinforce messages.
• Written comms plan: Ensuring clarity and thoroughness in messaging through written plans.

Achieving alignment in challenging situations:

• Case study: Building a new product with high technical and regulatory complexity.
• Design sprint: Using system maps and OOUX activities to align teams on a shared model.
• Rapid testing: Iterative testing with customers to refine and validate plans.
• Micro shareouts: Regular updates to keep stakeholders informed and involved.

Signs of losing alignment and steps to realign:

• Indicators: Vague reporting, stalled progress, tensions, and finger-pointing.
• Diagnostics: Speaking with ICs, maintaining cross-functional relationships, and understanding different perspectives.
• Timeline creation: Tracking changes and decisions to identify points of misalignment.
• Role clarity: Using frameworks like DACI for decision-making and accountability.
• Celebration and recognition: Acknowledging achievements to boost morale and reinforce positive culture.

Notable Quotes

• "Healthy alignment means you've built a shared understanding of the problem to be solved and people know the desired outcomes."
• "Teams should have flexibility on how to achieve outcomes, rather than being given prescriptive plans."
• "Psychological safety is crucial for healthy dialogue and team identity."
• "Leaders owe teams clarity on decision-making processes and expectations."
• "A lot of companies will say something like it is our strategy to increase sales by 40 percent, and that is a goal that is a desired outcome, but it is not exactly a strategy."
• "Alignment does not mean that everyone does something the same way."
• "It's okay to have an idea that turns out to fail or to be wrong as long as you learn from it."
• "You can always tell comms went well if you get back, 'Okay, cool. That makes sense.'"
• "Help your team understand how to bring rationale and really help people see what you see."
• "At the end of the day, alignment health comes down to strategic clarity."

Reference Materials

• Books:
  • "Good Strategy, Bad Strategy" by Richard Rumelt
  • "Turning People Into Teams" by David and Mary Sherwin
• Podcasts:
  • Amy Edmondson’s podcast on psychological safety (Harvard Business Review)
• Articles:
  • Christine Perfetti’s Tent Talks episode on strategic rallying

About Tent Talks

Chicago Camps hosts irregularly scheduled Tent Talks with people from all across the User Experience Design community, and beyond. Who really likes limits, anyway--If it's a cool idea, we'd love to hear about it and share it!

What is a Tent Talk? That's a great question, we'd love to tell you.

Tent Talks are short-form in nature, generally lasting from 10-20 minutes (ish) in a recorded format--we like to think of them as "S'mores-sized content" because that's pretty on-brand. Tent Talks can be a presentation on a topic, a live Q&A session about the work we do, or the work around the work we do, or really just about anything--we don't want to limit ourselves, or you.

You should send along an idea or topic of your own so we can learn from you, as well! You don't have to be a published author or a professional speaker on a circuit to be good at your job, so please, put yourself forward, and let's have some fun, talk, and share your experience with others!