Great Essay, I saw this repeatedly in several companies I worked for during my career, stunting growth in all of them. Each Department in a company defines these words and meanings differently but nobody knows it until it is too late and the project or the product fails.
Wish I knew this 35 years ago, would have saved me a lot of grief. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks, Eric. Same here. My co-author, @Jovanny Suriel, Ed. D., and I have built a framework to address this very problem in organizations. Its in preprint now, but the hope it that it will peer-reviewed soon. My Monday, June 15th WTB essay will go deeper.
In Japanese there's a phrase that gathers several meanings the same way, but I suspect it pulls them in the opposite direction. Your four senses of "aligned," different as they are, all point upward, toward specific agreement. This one — ashinami o soroeru, "to fall into step" — leans the other way, toward leveling down. It carries a pull to hold back whoever is faster or further ahead and bring them to the lower line. The nail that sticks up gets hammered down, as the saying goes. And even when there's no substance behind it, simply seeming to face the same direction is enough to let people say the footsteps are in step.
That said, what I've watched has mostly been the layers below the executive level, so there's little I can say about the C-suite itself.
@Arimitsu, you just gave me the comparative case I've been looking for. "Aligned" pulls upward toward an agreement people haven't reached. Ashinami o soroeru pulls downward, leveling whoever is faster or further ahead until the footsteps line up. Opposite directions, same end state. The illusion of agreement without the substance.
I like where you said: "even when there's no substance behind it, simply seeming to face the same direction is enough to let people say the footsteps are in step." That is the failure mode. The social signal becomes the agreement. Whatever was supposed to sit underneath the word stops mattering. That's the part of this problem the English vocabulary doesn't have a clean handle for, because we tend to assume "aligned" gestures at content. Your phrase admits that the appearance is the point. Correct me if I got that wrong.
Interestingly, and maybe something realized, the layers below the executive level are where drift intensifies. Monday's WTB is going to explore this layer. The HBR piece handles the C-suite. The harder question is what happens to meaning when the slogan moves down the org and starts hitting the people who have to actually do the work.
Would you give me permission to quote your comment in Monday's piece? Your directional contrast (upward false agreement versus downward enforced uniformity) shows that meaning failure is what coordination pressure does to language across cultures. Your reading from inside a culture where the mechanism runs in the opposite direction is the kind of evidence my exploration needs. I would credit you, of course.
Yes — you read it exactly right. The appearance becomes the point. Once a group seems to be facing the same way, the social signal starts standing in for the agreement, and whatever was supposed to sit underneath quietly drops out. That's the part I was trying to get at.
Below the executives — the layer I've watched — it gets blunter. "Falling into step" often means: if you improve something, you make more work for everyone, so please keep still. The one who suggests a fix breaks the appearance and adds to the load, so they get pulled back to the line. The slogan from the top lands downstairs as "don't make extra work."
Please feel free to quote the comment in Monday's piece — I'd be glad to have it there, and thank you for offering to credit me.
Great Essay, I saw this repeatedly in several companies I worked for during my career, stunting growth in all of them. Each Department in a company defines these words and meanings differently but nobody knows it until it is too late and the project or the product fails.
Wish I knew this 35 years ago, would have saved me a lot of grief. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks, Eric. Same here. My co-author, @Jovanny Suriel, Ed. D., and I have built a framework to address this very problem in organizations. Its in preprint now, but the hope it that it will peer-reviewed soon. My Monday, June 15th WTB essay will go deeper.
I enjoyed this breakdown of "aligned."
In Japanese there's a phrase that gathers several meanings the same way, but I suspect it pulls them in the opposite direction. Your four senses of "aligned," different as they are, all point upward, toward specific agreement. This one — ashinami o soroeru, "to fall into step" — leans the other way, toward leveling down. It carries a pull to hold back whoever is faster or further ahead and bring them to the lower line. The nail that sticks up gets hammered down, as the saying goes. And even when there's no substance behind it, simply seeming to face the same direction is enough to let people say the footsteps are in step.
That said, what I've watched has mostly been the layers below the executive level, so there's little I can say about the C-suite itself.
@Arimitsu, you just gave me the comparative case I've been looking for. "Aligned" pulls upward toward an agreement people haven't reached. Ashinami o soroeru pulls downward, leveling whoever is faster or further ahead until the footsteps line up. Opposite directions, same end state. The illusion of agreement without the substance.
I like where you said: "even when there's no substance behind it, simply seeming to face the same direction is enough to let people say the footsteps are in step." That is the failure mode. The social signal becomes the agreement. Whatever was supposed to sit underneath the word stops mattering. That's the part of this problem the English vocabulary doesn't have a clean handle for, because we tend to assume "aligned" gestures at content. Your phrase admits that the appearance is the point. Correct me if I got that wrong.
Interestingly, and maybe something realized, the layers below the executive level are where drift intensifies. Monday's WTB is going to explore this layer. The HBR piece handles the C-suite. The harder question is what happens to meaning when the slogan moves down the org and starts hitting the people who have to actually do the work.
Would you give me permission to quote your comment in Monday's piece? Your directional contrast (upward false agreement versus downward enforced uniformity) shows that meaning failure is what coordination pressure does to language across cultures. Your reading from inside a culture where the mechanism runs in the opposite direction is the kind of evidence my exploration needs. I would credit you, of course.
Yes — you read it exactly right. The appearance becomes the point. Once a group seems to be facing the same way, the social signal starts standing in for the agreement, and whatever was supposed to sit underneath quietly drops out. That's the part I was trying to get at.
Below the executives — the layer I've watched — it gets blunter. "Falling into step" often means: if you improve something, you make more work for everyone, so please keep still. The one who suggests a fix breaks the appearance and adds to the load, so they get pulled back to the line. The slogan from the top lands downstairs as "don't make extra work."
Please feel free to quote the comment in Monday's piece — I'd be glad to have it there, and thank you for offering to credit me.
Thank you!