The main threat your team faces, and no one admits

End of year is a great time to set goals for the year that is coming, but also to think about how to approach that task.

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Have you ever had this situation?

Leadership sets goals (in the form of KPIs, OKRs, North Star metrics… you name it) for the year.

These are shared with managers. While leadership is certain that context is being shared, managers usually get high-level versions with little transparency or reason why.

Managers think they already know the company’s business goals, but they have watered-down versions of them that are not enough to drive impactful decisions.

Often, they fill the gaps with assumptions and not many questions are asked (to give the illusion of alignment and competence).

Leadership goals are shared with teams, and they begin planning and working aiming to move toward some of those.

They get buried in execution, roadmaps change, urgencies pop up.

Marketing or Sales inject “quick wins” to the backlog.

Cross-team communication is low, so with no vision of other teams’ roadmaps, similar initiatives get done in tandem.

Dependencies with other teams create bottlenecks.

Energy falls, teams get burned out, leaders create context out of thin air to justify changes and keep teams engaged.

And at some point it hits. Product goals can be hit, but business KPIs remain unchanged or even decline.

So leadership pivots direction, and it starts all over again.

This is a common trap businesses fall into.

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But not everything is lost.

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Step 1 is to recognize this uncomfortable reality.

Now, start diagnosing your alignment score by going thoughtfully and honestly through this list and see if you can find any of these scenarios in your current reality:

• Setting yearly goals that get forgotten after 5 months.
• There’s no clear definition of what “success” means, so every team creates their own definition.
• There are no cross-team goals, bringing siloed effort that can create internal competition
• Having internal misalignment with stakeholders pushing for activity metrics instead of outcomes.
• Siloed team efforts to reach their goals, lacking cross communication, creating duplicated work, misaligned dependencies, and backlog bottlenecks.
• Stakeholders assuming leaders and teams know the WHY behind the direction, but it’s never documented or revisited.
• Lack of alignment between product and business goals (aka, achieving product goals won’t move the company closer to achieve business goals).
• There’s little to no context and transparency about the business strategy.
• Teams chasing initiatives because “It’s already in the roadmap” or “We promised it to clients”
• Stakeholders “knowing what the customer wants” with no research or data, basing features mostly on experience and gut feeling.
• Not enough data to get clear about what the customer wants, needs or understands about the company’s offering.

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If at any point of that list, you find yourself nodding, smirking or having a weird feeling in your gut you might be lacking internal alignment and clear communication.

If you got this far in the article, it means you are probably in this position and want to get out of it. Although there are no recipes for success, here are some things I tend to do with clients in these scenarios:

• Interview every stakeholder. Ask about their intentions, goals, wants and needs. Find what moves them forward. You can use the “5 whys” framework to make sure you are getting as deep as possible. Aim to spot conflicting goals between stakeholders so you can bring them to light later on.
• Interview your team leaders. Get real and deep into their view of how things are moving. Go beyond a 1 on 1 meeting to check status and craft a list of questions you can use to have candid answers from them.
• Avoid big planning meetings. Instead, do workshops where you can co-create with few conversations and more action. Bring any conflict of interest you previously spotted and look for alignment.
• Base your pace on evidence, not wishes. Review your planning process so it can be grounded in your reality. If you pivot quarterly, yearly plans aren’t doing any favours.
• Foster communication. And this goes beyond creating a shared Slack channel and expect everyone to communicate effortlessly. That doesn’t work. Make sure teams have shared goals they need to achieve. Tie initiatives across different stakeholders and teams. This creates the incentive for them to stay close and collaborate in a common goal.
• Document the why. Everyone should know WHY they are pushing. Even if the reason is “just because”, being clear and transparent can be enough for teams to follow. Be specific and document it in simple language teams can use, not in a 40-page deck no one reads.
• Connect delivery and business. Every product initiative should be paired (even tangentially) with at least one business goal. Prioritize team allocation and efforts accordingly.
• If possible, bring outside help (especially if you are a mid-size or big company). Facilitating these activities from the inside can be tough and, in some cases, create frictions. A fresh perspective helps you challenge status quo and remove “political” or internal misalignment bias.

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Plan your next steps so teams can gain clarity, reduce friction, and feel ownership while stakeholders get visibility, alignment, and confidence.