Schedule of Events

Strategic alignment is a priority for communication professionals, particularly heads of function and internal communication. The gap between what leaders know matters to organizational success and what the organization does remains stubbornly wide. Most leaders say strategic alignment matters. Very few employees experience it that way.

You see it in how priorities shift, how decisions are interpreted and how teams move in different directions while believing they are aligned. The default response is to communicate more or address the symptoms. These rarely fix the issue.

This session draws on global strategic alignment and leadership research supported by IABC, based on interviews with more than 50 CEOs and senior leaders. It points to a different explanation for why alignment breaks down and why many well-intended efforts fail to shift it.

Communication professionals are already inside this system. You see where meaning, behaviour and actions start to diverge, where shared clarity is missing and where ownership is unclear. What matters is how you respond. That is the leadership decision.

This session focuses on two areas: what leaders consistently get wrong about alignment and the role communication professionals can realistically play in enabling it. This is more than a presentation. Bring your questions.

• Understand how to spot where alignment is breaking down in teams and your organization.
• Strengthen how you enable alignment in your day-to-day work, using practical ways to guide conversations, enable shared meaning, surface gaps, and support clearer ownership and accountability.
• Identify one or two actions you can take over the next 90 days to better enable alignment, working with the role and access you already have.