When asked what role alignment plays in their work, executives say they spend as much as 50% to 80% of their time creating and maintaining it. They believe they are continually being judged on their ability to align team members’ goals in ways that produce the best outcomes for the company.

And though they agree with the responsibility, they note that, interestingly, alignment is not in their job description. It’s assumed. When asked, “Where were you trained how to create and sustain alignment if it is so much of what you do, and you are expected to do it well?” “At the school of hard knocks” is the response—in those exact or similar words.

Creating and sustaining alignment is a self-taught managerial skill, mostly occurring unnoticed through osmosis. Every manager’s capability is unique, resulting from each one participating in different groups, attending different managerial trainings, watching their managers, mentors, and consultants, and judging what worked and what didn’t, all blended over time with their mental models and personal demeanor.

Facilitators have their proprietary methods for creating alignment in groups, and most consultants have alignment approaches built into their methodologies. And employees have their own individual alignment methods born of life, even if not from their managers. Consequently, when a CEO and the other seven members of the C-suite interact to set goals and create the plan to attain them, there are eight private, proprietary, undefined, and undocumented alignment methods trying to operate on each other.