Not long ago, I joined a project midstream. Everything seemed to be moving. Everyone was busy. Meetings were short. Updates were frequent. There was momentum.
And yet… something felt off.
When I asked a few team members where we were heading, I got five different answers. Each sounded reasonable, but none aligned. Marketing thought we were gearing up for a product push. Engineering was deeply involved in backend architecture decisions. Sales was preparing materials for something altogether different. And leadership? They were expecting results in a matter of weeks.
The disconnect wasn’t dramatic. No shouting matches. No obvious failures. Just a slow drift, driven by a familiar culprit: unspoken assumptions.
It reminded me how easily alignment can unravel. Not because people aren’t working hard, but because they’re thinking quickly and assuming others see what they see.
The Invisible Drift
It’s easy to miss when alignment starts to fade. Teams move quickly. Conversations grow shorter. We default to shorthand, to a context we assume is shared. But fast thinking is reactive. It’s intuitive. It pulls from past experiences, personal heuristics, and mental models that may not be aligned across a group.
That’s when things start to diverge.
A team builds precisely what they think is needed, only to find it’s not what the customer asked for. A leader makes a quick call, without realizing half the team interpreted the situation differently. The product ships, but the marketing isn’t ready. The sales team prepares one story while the roadmap tells another.
These aren’t isolated incidents. They’re symptoms. Alignment didn’t break. It drifted. Quietly. Incrementally. And now it’s showing up in delays, confusion, and frustration.
Fast Thinking Isn’t the Problem. Unshared Thinking Is
It’s tempting to blame speed. But in truth, fast thinking has a place. We need teams to act with confidence, to trust their instincts, and make decisions when time is short.
The issue arises when those decisions aren’t grounded in shared understanding. When teams don’t take the time to make their reasoning visible, to themselves or each other, speed becomes guesswork. And guesswork, even when well-intentioned, rarely aligns a team.
Alignment lives in the why, not just the what. It’s restored not through more direction, but through deliberate pauses: to reflect, to clarify, and to connect.
Slowing Down Without Losing Momentum
Some of the strongest leaders I’ve worked with aren’t the ones who charge ahead with answers. They’re the ones who know when to pause.
They ask questions like:
“What are we assuming here?” “Does everyone define success the same way?” “Are we interpreting this decision through the same lens?”
They aren’t trying to slow things down for the sake of process. They’re creating moments of alignment, so the speed that follows is grounded, not fragmented.
They know that sometimes, a well-timed moment of clarity can save weeks of cleanup down the road.
Leading Alignment as a Habit, Not a Fix
Alignment isn’t a kickoff event or a one-time check-in. It’s a habit. A rhythm. A practice.
It shows up in how you open meetings. In how you recap decisions. In how you model the willingness to slow down when something feels unclear, even if no one else is saying it out loud.
And here’s the part most leaders miss:
The longer you wait to realign, the harder the conversation becomes. Misunderstandings harden into frustration. People start guarding instead of sharing. Trust erodes. All because a few assumptions went unspoken for too long.
Bringing your team back isn’t about correcting. It’s about reconnecting.
From Fast Forward to Shared Direction
I’ve seen it time and time again:
Speed will get you moving. But shared clarity is what gets you there, together.
It’s not always easy. It takes intention. It takes courage to pause when everyone else is pushing forward. But those moments of realignment? They’re what make the difference between movement and progress.
So if things feel misaligned right now, pause. Ask. Listen. Reconnect.
You might find that the team was closer than you thought. They were moving quickly and alone.