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{{First Name | My friend}},

There was a moment early in my career when I realized how little I understood about alignment.

I was a Captain in the U.S. Army and my unit was preparing for deployment to Iraq. I was serving as one of the Brigade Battle Captains during our Mission Rehearsal Exercise. It was my first shift in the role, and the uncertainty of what lay ahead was impossible to ignore. The operating environment was fluid. The units that would fall under our command were still shifting. Even some of our internal leadership roles were in motion.

Ambiguity wasn’t theoretical. It was the air we were breathing.

In that room, we did what capable teams do. We talked through plans. We nodded at proposed courses of action. We expressed support. On the surface, it felt productive, responsible, and aligned.

I remember walking out of one of those sessions feeling reassured.

We agreed.
So we must be ready.

But something in me remained unsettled.

Not because anyone lacked effort. Not because the strategy was flawed. But because as I replayed the conversation in my head, I realized we hadn’t actually clarified who owned which decisions once conditions changed. We hadn’t named what we were trading off. We hadn’t explored what would hold if the situation evolved—as it inevitably would.

The room had reached agreement.

Alignment hadn’t yet begun.

At the time, I didn’t have language for that difference. I only had the feeling that something essential was missing. It wasn’t more information. It wasn’t more energy. It was clarity around ownership and responsibility under pressure.

That realization changed how I led.

Over the next few days, I led my team in creating visual artifacts that forced those conversations. We mapped assumptions. We clarified decision rights. We ran scenarios not to be dramatic, but to expose blind spots. We made ownership explicit before circumstances made it urgent.

What I learned in that environment has stayed with me ever since.

Agreement answers a simple question:
“Do we generally support this?”

It’s an easy question to answer. It moves the meeting forward. It creates momentum.

Alignment asks something harder:
“Who owns this, what are we trading off, and what holds when conditions change?”

Agreement closes a conversation.
Alignment opens an accountability loop.

And that difference only becomes visible once pressure shows up.

Years later, I see the same dynamic in executive teams.

The context is different. The stakes are different. But the pattern is familiar.

A strategy is set. The debate is thoughtful. The room feels aligned. Heads nod. The decision is documented. The meeting moves on.

Weeks later, that same decision comes back.

Not dramatically. Not confrontationally. Just… quietly.

Someone revisits an assumption. Someone asks for clarification. Someone hesitates because the tradeoffs weren’t fully surfaced. The team isn’t resisting the decision. They’re struggling to hold it.

And when you look closely, it’s often the same gap I felt in that rehearsal exercise years ago.

Agreement was reached. Ownership wasn’t fully anchored.

Execution problems rarely start as intelligence or effort problems. More often, they begin at the decision layer—when no one has clearly named who carries the decision once conditions shift.

And conditions always shift.

For a long time, I did this work intuitively.

In the military, I had to represent a commander’s intent across changing terrain, shifting units, and evolving constraints. Clarity wasn’t optional. Ownership wasn’t abstract. If authority blurred, operations suffered.

Later, when I began working with executives outside that environment, I noticed something.

Many teams didn’t have someone inside the room watching the decision layer that closely.

They had brilliant strategists, strong operators, and thoughtful leaders. But they didn’t always have someone slowing the conversation down just enough to ask:

Who owns this?
What are we trading off?
What holds when pressure arrives?

That’s the layer I learned to see early in my career.

And it’s the layer I now help teams strengthen deliberately.

If this distinction between agreement and alignment resonates, I wrote more about it in an article on my website.

It’s called “Agreement Is a Weak Signal of Alignment.”

You can read it here.

It goes deeper into why agreement feels satisfying in the moment and why it so often fails to hold under pressure.

If there’s one insight that has significantly influenced how I lead, it’s this:

Agreement feels efficient.
Alignment feels slower.

But only one survives the moment the room empties.

As you think about the decisions your team has made recently, ask yourself:

Where did you reach agreement?
And where did you establish alignment?

The difference won’t always be obvious at first.

But once you start seeing it, you won’t miss it again.

Until Next Sunday,

Shawnette Rochelle, MBA, PCC
Founder, Excellence Unbounded
Executive alignment and decision clarity

If you’re curious to learn more about my work with executive teams, you can find it here.