The Architecture of Alignment

by Martin Pettinati:

In every organization, there are two types of noise: the chaos of a crisis and the silence of daily routine.

During crises, we instinctively turn to communication: leaders need to reassure, align, and move fast. Communication then becomes visible, urgent, and tightly managed. All everyone asks is about communication: What do we say? When? How? Who should speak?

A very different thing happens when things are calm.

Too often, we think of those as times to slow down communication –or delegate it entirely to corporate rituals. And yet, this is precisely when the most strategic work takes place.

Calm is when you sow

In times of stability, organizations aren’t silent. Or at least, they shouldn’t be. They should be listening, looking for signals, trying to interpret the signs and figure out what’s next. This is when communication can create direction, cohesion, and purpose, not in response to a fire, but in service of a future.

Whenever fires have been put out, that’s when you should have communicators at the table. Not as mere keepers of the organization’s chronicles, but as narrative designers, helping every other leader articulate where they’re going, why it matters, and how everyone plays a part.

Urgency has a particular way of reminding people of where they need to go and what they need to do. Urgency grants us the power of focus. In times of relative calm, however, people tend to forget the mission. It feels like it can wait. But if we never feel like summer and spring are to be spent sowing, there will be nothing to reap when winter comes.

The job of communicators is not just to announce change. And if you’re keeping them on the bench until there is something to announce, you’re doing it wrong. Communicators shape how the rest of the organization –and the world outside– understands their reality.

Communication is infrastructure

Beyond those who bear the official badge, there are other communicators within your walls. On every division, on every team, and yes, on every level, there are unofficial circuits where meaning travels. These are actual Key Opinion Leaders, and through them you have the chance to build culture, equip leaders, and align teams. 

The true architecture of alignment isn’t designed in some upstairs office, by the leadership crew, on some whiteboard, on a late night when inspiration came upon them. Alignment is a very intimate notion of camaraderie and shared purpose, that springs up in the lower levels of an organization, and quickly spreads through unofficial channels. 

Your communication officers are those best prepared to harness that feeling and crafting a narrative around it, to leverage that sense of community and fill it with meaning. Their mission is to find those ongoing conversations, and equip people who are having them with the tools of narrative, so they can use all that power to move mountains:

They can help a product lead turn their roadmap into a vision that feels palpable and people want to follow, or maybe they can help articulate values that feel lived, not laminated; or maybe they can help the CEO speak not like a founder, but like a system leader. If you’re lucky, this will help others speak for themselves. 

A strong communication function distributes narrative power, rather than hoard it. Your communication team is there to teach you and every other leader across the organization how to tell stories that align with strategy, so that the company stops sounding like a slogan and starts sounding like a system.

Communication is not the cherry on top, it’s baked in

Organizations often ask: Should we hire a communicator now, or wait until we have something to share with the world?

By then, it’s too late.

Because communication isn’t what you layer on top of a product, a change, or a decision. It’s what helps shape those things from the start. What happens is that, somewhere along the way, we were brainwashed into thinking communication –and marketing, for that matter– is a unidirectional flow of messages. What we tell about ourselves.

This is so wrong, it makes my teeth hurt.

Countless organizations build things in the dark. They spend months, or even years –and of course, money!–, crafting products that no one asked for, when they should have been busy talking to people.

When communicators are present and involved early, they don’t just refine messages, they help clarify the intent. They ask the questions others don’t. They find the words leaders were searching for. They spot the gaps between what’s said and what’s done.

Communicators design and build the logic behind the message, not just the message itself. The architecture of alignment is thought to be about power, culture, or enrollment. And while all of those things are in the mix, the real core of the matter is about meaning. And that is what communicators deal in: the shared, dynamic, and dialogical construction of meaning.

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Martin Pettinati is a Madrid-based strategic marketer obsessed with bringing clarity to businesses all over the world. He is a #WeLeadComms honoree.

Written by: Editor