Alignment Assessment

Volume I: Looking Inward

This assessment maps how your leadership team functions together. There are no right answers, only honest ones.

Answer for how things actually are, not how they should be or how they look on a good day. If a question makes you wince slightly before answering, you are probably in the right territory.

The core question: Can we think together clearly?

Progress: 0 of 32 questions answered
Coherence Trust Self-Awareness Momentum

Does This Feel True?

1Rarely true for us
2Occasionally true
3Sometimes true, sometimes not
4Mostly true
5Yes, reliably true

About You

Lens 1: Coherence

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Do we share the same map?

Shared Direction

Q1 We describe our strategy in similar language across the leadership team.
Put your leadership team in separate rooms and ask them to explain the strategy to a new hire. If a stranger could tell they were describing the same company, you have coherence. If it sounds like three different businesses sharing a logo, you have drift.
Rarely trueReliably true
Q2 We could each articulate our throughline in a single paragraph, and those paragraphs would match.
The throughline is the organising idea beneath everything else. If it cannot be said calmly in sixty seconds, you do not have one. You have a collage of intentions held together by optimism.
Rarely trueReliably true
Q3 A new senior hire could learn who we are and what we stand for within their first week.
Strong cultures are legible. You can feel what matters. The priorities are obvious from how people talk, what gets celebrated, what gets questioned. Weak cultures require a decoder ring and months of observation.
Rarely trueReliably true
Q4 Our stated priorities match how we actually allocate time and resources.
Every organisation has two sets of priorities. The ones on the wall and the ones in the calendar. The real priorities are the ones that survive contact with a busy Tuesday.
Rarely trueReliably true

Common Language

Q5 When we use terms like "committed," "approved," or "priority," everyone interprets them the same way.
If "committed" means something different in engineering than in sales, you do not have a shared plan. You have two plans wearing the same name, destined to collide sometime around delivery.
Rarely trueReliably true
Q6 People from different functions can discuss work without needing to translate their terminology.
Sales talks about "pipeline." Marketing talks about "MQLs." Product talks about "user stories." Finance talks about "bookings." Sometimes these are the same thing. Often they are not. The translation overhead is invisible until it is not.
Rarely trueReliably true
Q7 What we say in meetings is understood the first time.
If every meeting spawns three clarifications explaining "what I actually meant was..." then coherence is already broken. People are effectively working in dialects. Energy that should go into the work goes into interpretation and correction instead.
Rarely trueReliably true
Q8 We describe our customers' problems consistently, whether it is Sales, Product, or the CEO talking.
One customer conversation, three different interpretations. Sales hears urgency. Product hears a feature request. Leadership hears validation. Each is listening for something different, and each is certain they heard the truth.
Rarely trueReliably true

Lens 2: Trust

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Can we be honest with each other?

Psychological Safety

Q9 When someone disagrees with a proposal, they say so in the meeting rather than afterward.
In low-trust cultures, truth is whispered in corridors and saved for exit interviews. The meeting ends with smiles. The Slack channels light up immediately after. Everyone "clarifies" what was really decided.
Rarely trueReliably true
Q10 Bad news reaches leadership quickly and intact.
Each layer of an organisation tends to soften bad news slightly. "A serious problem" becomes "a challenge" becomes "something we're monitoring." By the time it reaches the top, the crisis has been translated into a footnote.
Rarely trueReliably true
Q11 People ask basic questions without embarrassment, even in senior company.
The question everyone is thinking but nobody asks is usually the most important question in the room. The courage to ask "I don't understand, can you explain?" is a leading indicator of organisational health.
Rarely trueReliably true
Q12 Our culture rewards honesty more than comfort.
The test is not whether honesty is possible. It is whether honesty is normal. When was the last time someone said something in a meeting that made the room uncomfortable, and was thanked for it?
Rarely trueReliably true

Behavioural Integrity

Q13 Our leadership behaviour is consistent when pressure rises.
Pressure reveals the truth of a culture. The leader who is calm on good days and volatile on bad days has taught everyone to watch the weather before speaking. Consistency under pressure is the foundation of trust.
Rarely trueReliably true
Q14 Leadership means what it says.
When leaders use words like "priority," "commitment," or "urgent," people can trust those words carry consistent weight. Language inflation is a slow poison. Each overstatement teaches people to discount everything leadership says.
Rarely trueReliably true
Q15 Our meetings remain open in tone even when topics are difficult.
You can tell a lot about an organisation by watching what happens when someone raises a difficult topic. Does the room stay open? Or does it tighten, with glances and shifts in tone that signal "this is not welcome"?
Rarely trueReliably true
Q16 We honour commitments rather than quietly renegotiating them later.
A commitment is not a hope. It is a promise that others are building plans around. When commitments are opening bids that get renegotiated in side conversations, people learn to add buffer to every timeline and doubt every promise.
Rarely trueReliably true

Lens 3: Self-Awareness

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Do we see ourselves clearly?

Honest Capability

Q17 Our internal assessment of our strengths would match what a candid customer would say about us.
The version of your company that lives inside your head is often more flattering than the version that lives in your customers' experience. The gap between these two versions is the self-awareness gap.
Rarely trueReliably true
Q18 We are honest about where our product excels and where it struggles.
Every product has weaknesses. The question is whether you can name them out loud. Organisations that cannot admit weakness build elaborate workarounds. Customers notice. Honesty about weakness makes your claims about strength more credible.
Rarely trueReliably true
Q19 We pursue opportunities that match our actual strengths, not ones we hope to grow into.
Hope is a beautiful thing, but it is a terrible basis for a sales pipeline. When winning requires becoming a different company first, you are not selling what you are. You are selling what you wish you were.
Rarely trueReliably true
Q20 When we miss a target, we examine our own assumptions before blaming external factors.
There are always external factors. The market shifted. The competitor undercut. The timing was wrong. The question is whether they are the whole truth. The most useful question after a miss is not "what happened to us?" It is "what did we get wrong?"
Rarely trueReliably true

Assumption Testing

Q21 When someone makes a claim about customers or markets, the natural response is to ask what evidence supports it.
"I think our customers want X" is the beginning of a conversation, not the end of one. The discipline is not scepticism but curiosity. What makes you think so? How would we know if you were wrong?
Rarely trueReliably true
Q22 We can name the three biggest assumptions underlying our current strategy.
Every strategy is a bet. Assumptions hide inside strategies like load-bearing walls. Remove the wrong one and the whole thing collapses. But most teams cannot name their assumptions without significant effort. They have become invisible.
Rarely trueReliably true
Q23 We regularly revisit the assumptions behind our strategy, even when things seem to be going well.
Success can be the enemy of scrutiny. When things are working, nobody wants to ask why. But the assumptions that got you here may not carry you forward. Markets shift. Customers change. What worked stops working.
Rarely trueReliably true
Q24 We have changed our minds about something important in the last six months based on evidence.
This is the test of whether self-awareness is real or performative. If you cannot point to a significant belief or decision that changed because the evidence demanded it, something is wrong. Mature organisations change their minds regularly.
Rarely trueReliably true

Lens 4: Momentum

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Can we convert decisions into action?

Decision Tempo

Q25 Decisions get made. Discussion reaches resolution rather than trailing off into ambiguity.
Some meetings end with a decision. Some meetings end with a plan to have another meeting. The second kind is not progress. It is the appearance of progress, which is worse because it feels productive.
Rarely trueReliably true
Q26 People know what to do after decisions are made; next steps are clear.
A decision without clear next steps is not a decision. It is a sentiment. Momentum requires that decisions translate into assignments, timelines and accountability. Someone owns what happens next. Everyone knows who.
Rarely trueReliably true
Q27 Our cadence is steady, neither frenetic nor sluggish.
Organisations have rhythms. Frenetic organisations run on adrenaline until people collapse. Sluggish ones move slowly regardless of circumstances. Steady cadence is the pace you can sustain, the rhythm that allows both urgency and reflection.
Rarely trueReliably true
Q28 Decisions made on Friday are still decisions on Monday.
Weekend doubt is a symptom of low conviction. If decisions routinely unravel after a few days of reflection, something is wrong with how they were made. Decisions should be durable. They should survive a weekend without needing to be relitigated.
Rarely trueReliably true

Resilience

Q29 We adjust course calmly when new information appears.
New information is not an attack on previous decisions. It is just new information. Mature organisations adjust calmly. They treat adaptation as competence, not as admission of error.
Rarely trueReliably true
Q30 We maintain a sense of proportion in how we respond to setbacks.
Setbacks are inevitable. Small setbacks treated as catastrophes drain the organisation. Large setbacks treated as minor issues create blind spots. Proportion is the ability to match your response to the actual size of the problem.
Rarely trueReliably true
Q31 We can accelerate work without relying on constant pressure or fire drills.
Speed should not require suffering. Some organisations only know how to move fast when someone is shouting. This is not momentum. This is dependency on adrenaline. It works for short bursts. It destroys people over time.
Rarely trueReliably true
Q32 Difficult periods leave us stronger and more capable, not just relieved to have survived.
Some teams learn from difficulty. Some teams just endure it. The difference is whether you emerge with insight or just exhaustion. Relief is not resilience.
Rarely trueReliably true

Your Alignment Profile

How You See It

These are your perceptions of how your organisation functions today.

Coherence
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Trust
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Self-Awareness
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Momentum
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Your Pattern

Pattern is a heuristic suggestion based on lens balance, not a diagnosis.

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Diagnostic
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First Move
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Also worth exploring
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About This Assessment

This diagnostic surfaces patterns in how your leadership team functions together. It draws on research into organisational health, psychological safety, and decision-making effectiveness. The value lies in the conversation the results generate, not in the precision of the numbers themselves.