Strategic Alignment Engine

Before checking cascade, check the source. Ask five people from five different teams: "What is the company's most important strategic priority right now?"

Scoring:

• All five give the same answer: ✅ Articulation is clear
• 3–4 give similar answers: 🟡 Loose alignment — clarify and communicate
• < 3 agree: 🔴 Strategy isn't clear enough to cascade. Fix this before fixing cascade.

Format test: The strategy should be statable in one sentence. If leadership needs a paragraph, teams won't internalize it.

• ❌ "We focus on product-led growth while maintaining enterprise relationships and expanding our international presence and investing in platform capabilities"
• ✅ "Win the mid-market healthcare segment in DACH before Series B"

Step 2: Cascade Mapping

Map the flow from company strategy → each level of the organization.

Company level:  OKR-1, OKR-2, OKR-3
    ↓
Dept level:     Sales OKRs, Eng OKRs, Product OKRs, CS OKRs
    ↓
Team level:     Team A OKRs, Team B OKRs...
    ↓
Individual:     Personal goals / rocks

For each goal at every level, ask:

• Which company-level goal does this support?
• If this goal is 100% achieved, how much does it move the company goal?
• Is the connection direct or theoretical?

Step 3: Alignment Detection

Three failure patterns:

Orphan goals: Team or individual goals that don't connect to any company goal.

• Symptom: "We've been working on this for a quarter and nobody above us seems to care"
• Root cause: Goals set bottom-up or from last quarter's priorities without reconciling to current company OKRs
• Fix: Connect or cut. Every goal needs a parent.

Conflicting goals: Two teams' goals, when both succeed, create a worse outcome.

• Classic example: Sales commits to volume contracts (revenue), CS is measured on satisfaction scores. Sales closes bad-fit customers; CS scores tank.
• Fix: Cross-functional OKR review before quarter begins. Shared metrics where teams interact.

Coverage gaps: Company has 3 OKRs. 5 teams support OKR-1, 2 support OKR-2, 0 support OKR-3.

• Symptom: Company OKR-3 consistently misses; nobody owns it
• Fix: Explicit ownership assignment. If no team owns a company OKR, it won't happen.

See scripts/alignment_checker.py for automated detection against your JSON-formatted OKRs.

Step 4: Silo Identification

Silos exist when teams optimize for local metrics at the expense of company metrics.

Silo signals:

• A department consistently hits their goals while the company misses
• Teams don't know what other teams are working on
• "That's not our problem" is a common phrase
• Escalations only flow up; coordination never flows sideways
• Data isn't shared between teams that depend on each other

Silo root causes:

1. Incentive misalignment: Teams rewarded for local metrics don't optimize for company metrics
2. No shared goals: When teams share a goal, they coordinate. When they don't, they drift.
3. No shared language: Engineering doesn't understand sales metrics; sales doesn't understand technical debt
4. Geography or time zones: Silos accelerate when teams don't interact organically

Silo measurement:

• How often do teams request something from each other vs. proceed independently?
• How much time does it take to resolve a cross-functional issue?
• Can a team member describe the current priorities of an adjacent team?

Step 5: Communication Gap Analysis

What the CEO says ≠ what teams hear. The gap grows with company size.

The message decay model:

• CEO communicates strategy at all-hands → managers filter through their lens → teams receive modified version → individuals interpret further

Gap sources:

• Ambiguity: Strategy stated at too high a level ("grow the business") lets each team fill in their own interpretation
• Frequency: One all-hands per quarter isn't enough repetition to change behavior
• Medium mismatch: Long written strategy doc for teams that respond to visual communication
• Trust deficit: Teams don't believe the strategy is real ("we've heard this before")

Gap detection:

• Run the Step 1 articulation test across all levels
• Compare what leadership thinks they communicated vs. what teams say they heard
• Survey: "What changed about how you work since the last strategy update?"

Step 6: Realignment Protocol

How to fix misalignment without calling it a "realignment" (which creates fear).

Step 6a: Don't start with what's wrong Starting with "here's our misalignment" creates defensiveness. Start with "here's where we're heading and I want to make sure we're connected."

Step 6b: Re-cascade in a workshop, not a memo Alignment workshops are more effective than documents. Get company-level OKR owners and department leads in a room. Map connections. Find gaps together.

Step 6c: Fix incentives before fixing goals If department heads are rewarded for local metrics that conflict with company goals, no amount of goal-setting fixes the problem. The incentive structure must change first.

Step 6d: Install a quarterly alignment check After fixing, prevent recurrence. See references/alignment-playbook.md for quarterly cadence.

Alignment Score

A quick health check. Score each area 0–10:

Total: __ / 50

Key Questions for Alignment

• "Ask your newest team member: what is the most important thing the company is trying to achieve right now?"
• "Which company OKR does your team's top priority support? Can you trace the connection?"
• "When Team A and Team B both hit their goals, does the company always win? Are there scenarios where they don't?"
• "What changed in how your team works since the last strategy update?"
• "Name a decision made last week that was influenced by the company strategy."

Red Flags

• Teams consistently hit goals while company misses targets
• Cross-functional projects take 3x longer than expected (coordination failure)
• Strategy updated quarterly but team priorities don't change
• "That's a leadership problem, not our problem" attitude at the team level
• New initiatives announced without connecting them to existing OKRs
• Department heads optimize for headcount or budget rather than company outcomes

Integration with Other C-Suite Roles

Detailed References

• scripts/alignment_checker.py — Automated OKR alignment analysis (orphans, conflicts, coverage)
• references/alignment-playbook.md — Cascade techniques, quarterly alignment check, common patterns