#organizational-alignment

#organizational-alignment

AI has changed the speed of business. The tools are smarter. The workflows are tighter. Automation now powers everything from emails to reports to meeting recaps. Execution has never been easier. However, as the systems move faster, something else is slowing down. Leadership. It does not always happen in obvious ways. The systems are running. Deadlines are met. Messages are delivered. Teams are producing.

For justice-centered leaders, there is a stubborn dichotomy between our genuine commitment to equity, inclusion, and alignment in our organizations on the one hand, and our continuing self-diagnosis of high levels of misalignment, conflict, and turnover on the other. Three years after Maurice Mitchell's seminal piece, " Building Resilient Organizations: Toward Joy and Durable Power in a Time of Crisis," rang the alarm of "urgent concerns about the internal workings of progressive spaces," the current discourse suggests that the needle has not moved much.

External marketing speaks to the public. It's aimed at customers, both current and potential. Internal marketing, however, is meant for employees. The two audiences may overlap in some aspects - age, location, income level - but remain distinct groups with a different relationship to the company. As noted earlier, the goal of external marketing is to generate more revenue for the business, whether that's through more sales or subscriptions.

This isn't holiday spirit. It's design and a great lesson in influence. If leaders learned how to design decisions the way December does, they would get clarity, alignment, and speed all year, and not just when the calendar runs out. The idea is simple. When options shrink, focus increases. When criteria are explicit, choices become easier. When time is clear, commitment accelerates. The research backs this up.

It all started back in the early 1990s at a meeting with our travel agent advisory board. This was a group of about a dozen standout travel advisors from across the country chosen by our sales team not just for their sales volume but for their creativity and sharp business instincts. They came from a variety of backgrounds, brought different perspectives to the table, and had all built successful businesses from the ground up. Most importantly, each was seen as savvy and articulate.

"I want to understand how you spend your working hours - and, ideally, what you've made (or are making) that you're most proud of," Weiss told newsroom employees in the memo, which was viewed by Business Insider. Weiss advised employees to "be blunt" and avoid jargon like "synergy," saying that she's also interested in hearing "how we can be better."

Over 40 minutes, the panel returned again and again to three themes: data quality, organizational alignment and cultural readiness. The consensus was clear: AI doesn't create order from chaos. If organizations don't evolve their culture and their standards, AI will accelerate dysfunction, not fix it. Clean data isn't optional anymore Allen set the tone from the executive perspective. He argued that enterprises must build alignment on high-quality, structured and standardized data within teams and across workflows, applications and departments.

The problem here isn't just that an AI might 'break' and go rogue; the danger of an AI taking matters into its own hands can arise even when the model is working as intended on a technical level.