How comms can navigate the perfect storm (part 1: strategic alignment)

13 April 2026

Wayne Aspland and Zora Artis:

Right now, the communication profession is sailing into a perfect storm. 

On the one hand, the new world of work (including uncertainty and accelerating change) is stressing the organisations we support and making our jobs far more complex. 

On the other, there is evidence that we are struggling to deliver on two critical priorities: enabling strategic alignment and building AI capability.

This may be a perfect storm, but it’s a perfect opportunity, too. That’s because we’re needed more than ever.

Without alignment and a people-first approach to AI transformation, our organisations have no hope of building the agility they desperately need in this new world of work.

Today, we’ll explore the current state of strategic alignment and where the opportunities lie. Next week, we’ll look at AI transformation.

Leading the strategic alignment conversation

Belief in the importance of strategic alignment is near universal. 91% of leaders say it’s fundamental to organisational goals. And, according to the recent Gallagher Employee Communications Report, strategic alignment is regarded as the profession’s foundational purpose.

Despite this, alignment levels in many organisations have flat-lined, if not declined. Today, only 14% of leaders believe their organisations are highly aligned, and even that lowly number is under threat due to accelerating change.

To understand why, we interviewed 55 leaders from five continents. This included CEOs, Chiefs of Staff and senior leaders in strategy, HR, operations and communication. 

The result is a new research paper entitled ‘From groupthink to governance: leadership, alignment, and the courage to close the gap.’ It looks at why organisations are struggling to close the gap between strategic intent and execution, and what it actually takes to shift.

Our organisations aren’t aligned. Here’s why.

As outlined in the infographic below, there are seven reasons why attempts to align are failing. They cover areas such as executive alignment, leader capability, trust and drift.

Underneath them all is a single uncomfortable reality. Organisations don’t take alignment seriously. It’s treated as an exercise in groupthink. We can see this clearly in two paradoxes:

• The alignment paradox: Almost everyone acknowledges the importance of alignment, yet most are unsure about what it is or how to enable it. The gap between stated priority and actual practice has barely moved in seven years. 
• The accountability paradox: Few measure alignment, and those who do rely on proxy or lag measures. Without real measurement, nobody owns alignment. And what nobody owns, nobody fixes. 

The misalignment tax: a high price to pay

This inability to align comes at a heavy price. It drives poorer performance and culture in four different ways:

• Time: firefighting, realigning priorities and fixing downstream issues.
• Capacity: duplicated work, rework, misdirection and incomplete work.
• Speed: slower decisions, delayed execution and reduced adaptability.
• Relational: reduced trust, higher disengagement and false harmony.

From groupthink to governance: the opportunity ahead

So, how do we make a difference?

The first step is to appreciate that we have a vital role to play, but we can’t do it alone. We need to form an alignment coalition that can focus on enabling and sustaining alignment together.

The research is clear on this: the executive team has to go first. Until there is genuine shared clarity at the top, nothing downstream holds. Our role, alongside HR, Chiefs of Staff, Strategy, Technology and Change Management, is to help make that happen and to build the conditions that sustain it by addressing four shifts.

Shift 1: From a group of leaders to a leadership group

The truth is that many executive teams are misaligned themselves. As a result, key decisions can lead to false agreement and inconsistent actions. An aligned organisation can only happen if its executive team (and, for that matter, Board) is aligned first.

So, the executive needs to do the work to align first. They need to ensure agreement and shared clarity before taking key decisions, such as a strategy update, within the organisation.

Shift 2: From proxies to proof 

As already stated, a lack of effective, real-time measurement seriously undermines alignment. One of the first steps the coalition needs to take is to define what alignment looks like and how it will be tracked, reported and managed.

Shift 3: From cascade to conversations

One of the most critical lessons we took away from these interviews was the reality that alignment isn’t a simple process. It is highly dependent on some very human traits. In particular, trust, listening and psychological safety. 

This is why we need to move beyond cascades and build the organisation’s direction through dialogue with our people. We need to gather their input into strategy, and we need to stress test it through them. 

Genuinely seeking input from people will build trust, commitment, ownership, and a much healthier relationship between leaders and employees. Furthermore, it will help to speed up the flow of information from the frontlines to the executive: critically important in these fast-moving times.

Shift 4: From annual to agile

As already stated, alignment isn’t static. It drifts. As a result, it requires ongoing attention. We need to view it as an ongoing practice rather than a periodic event. 

Close

The research paper goes into each of these shifts in detail, including how to build the business case, set the baseline and develop the operating rhythm that sustains strategic direction over time. You can download it at www.clearleaders.com.au.

Next week, I’ll be making the case for why communication and change management need to be central to the AI conversation and what that looks like in practice.

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Wayne Aspland, MAICD, FCSCE is a leadership, strategy and change communication professional. He helps organisations and teams realise their potential in today’s new world of work. A world where the opportunities created by AI are balanced against the strain of accelerating change and uncertainty.

Zora Artis, IABC Fellow, SCMP is CEO of Artis Advisory and co-founder of The Alignment People and Clear Leaders. She coaches, advises, and facilitates C-suite and senior teams through change and complexity – turning competing priorities into clear decisions, stronger cohesion, and coordinated action.