Drag is Slowing Your Company Down

In aviation, aerodynamics dictate efficiency. The more streamlined an aircraft is, the less fuel it burns to maintain speed. Even small imperfections - misaligned components, unnecessary weight, surface irregularities, etc. - can create drag, forcing the engines to work harder and reducing overall performance.

The same principle applies to organizations. Misalignment from unclear priorities, conflicting incentives, redundant processes, etc. create invisible resistance that slows progress. Just as in in aerodynamics, even small issues can compound, making execution harder and more expensive than it should be.

Clarity at the top often doesn’t translate to clarity at the execution level.

Misalignment Is More Common Than Leaders Think

Many leaders believe they have been very clear about priorities. They believe their teams know the company’s strategic goals and are making decisions that reinforce them, but in reality, clarity at the top often doesn’t translate to clarity at the execution level. Messages get diluted, competing interpretations emerge and before long, different parts of the organization are pulling in slightly different directions.

This happens for several reasons. Leadership teams often communicate priorities in broad strokes, expecting managers and employees to fill in the gaps. But without continuous reinforcement, competing incentives take over. Managers often prioritize growing their team rather than eliminating inefficiencies. Product teams often push forward with initiatives that no longer align well with business strategy because they are worried about their jobs. Small misalignments accumulate and suddenly the company is burning far more energy than necessary to make progress.

Creating organizational clarity is an ongoing process, not a one-time exercise. Leaders need to go further than setting goals and announcing priorities; they need to reinforce them constantly, eliminate ambiguity and ensure alignment exists at every level.

Eliminating Unnecessary Weight

One of the biggest sources of drag in an organization is unnecessary complexity - projects that no longer serve the strategy, unnecessary processes and legacy ways of working that persist because no one questions them. In aviation, excess weight directly impacts fuel efficiency. In companies, unnecessary weight manifests as bureaucracy, redundant initiatives and unclear ownership.

For an organization to move efficiently, leaders must be ruthless about cutting unnecessary processes and projects. This isn’t about arbitrary cost-cutting; it’s about making sure that every piece of work contributes to the company’s actual objectives. This requires both discipline and a willingness to challenge assumptions. Many initiatives exist because they once made sense, but if they no longer serve a clear purpose, they need to go.

Traditional Alignment Meetings Don’t Work

Most companies attempt to fix alignment issues through meetings - monthly check-ins, quarterly business reviews, cross-functional syncs. Most people hate these meetings. They tend to be overly focused on surface-level updates and intentional effort is often made to avoid addressing deeper misalignments. People leave these meetings with more information but rarely with more clarity.

That doesn’t mean alignment reviews should be abandoned altogether, but they need to be structured differently. Instead of just reviewing progress, leaders should actively look for misalignment and friction - where teams might be duplicating work, where priorities have shifted or where execution has drifted from strategy. Instead of focusing on what’s been done, meetings should focus on what needs to be adjusted, clarified or stopped entirely.

However, alignment shouldn’t rely on periodic meetings alone. Companies that achieve high alignment do so continuously, not just at the end of a quarter. The key is to create systems of transparency, cross-functional visibility and ongoing feedback so that teams can self-correct in real time, rather than waiting for a meeting to identify misalignment.

Transparency and Feedback Reduce Drag

Misalignment thrives in ambiguity. When employees don’t have clear visibility into company priorities, they default to what is most immediately rewarding, whether that’s securing budget, expanding their team or optimizing for personal performance metrics rather than organizational success.

Making goals and priorities explicit at every level ensures that teams don’t waste time navigating conflicting expectations. When company, team and individual objectives are clearly communicated and constantly reinforced, alignment becomes the default state rather than something that requires frequent correction. Priorities should be reflected in how work is structured, not just in strategy documents that sit in a folder somewhere. Instead of treating alignment as a quarterly exercise, organizations should make it dynamic, allowing teams to adjust in real time as conditions change.

Lack of visibility is another major source of drag. Misalignment often happens not because teams disagree on strategy but because they simply don’t know what others are working on. Two teams might be solving the same problem differently without realizing it. A product team might be developing a feature that marketing isn’t ready to support. Lack of cross-functional awareness creates inefficiency and duplication of effort. Transparent project tracking ensures that people can see where work overlaps or conflicts, while shared status updates help teams adjust as conditions evolve. AI-driven summaries (such as those Clarity Forge provides) can further reduce friction by surfacing key insights rather than requiring teams to sift through endless reports.

At an individual level, performance management plays a critical role in reinforcing alignment. If performance reviews and feedback loops don’t explicitly tie back to strategic priorities, employees will optimize for personal wins rather than organizational success. Ongoing feedback should highlight contributions that move the company forward, not just individual output. Performance reviews should evaluate alignment to company goals, rewarding those who contribute to efficiency and clarity rather than empire-building. Recognition systems should reinforce behaviors that drive alignment, such as collaboration, cross-functional impact and prioritizing company objectives over siloed goals.

By integrating transparency, visibility and feedback into daily operations, organizations reduce the need for constant course correction. Instead of leaders acting as alignment enforcers, teams develop self-correcting mechanisms, ensuring that work remains aligned without excessive overhead.

Organizational Incentives

Misalignment is not just a communication problem, incentives play a huge role and most of them are not geared toward reducing organizational drag. Many individuals - especially in large companies - are rewarded far more for empire building than for efficiencies. Growing a team, securing more budget and launching more initiatives often brings more status than ensuring the company is operating smoothly.

This is one of the hardest challenges to fix. It requires leadership not only to reward efficiency and alignment but also to call out behaviors that create drag. When leaders celebrate someone for simplifying a process, shutting down a redundant project, or reallocating resources to higher-value work, it signals that alignment matters. But if the biggest rewards always go to those who expand their scope, misalignment will persist.

Reducing Drag and Increasing Lift

Just like in aviation, reducing organizational drag isn’t about working harder, it’s about working more efficiently. When an organization is aligned, execution feels smoother. Teams spend less time navigating conflicting priorities and more time making real progress. Leaders don’t have to course-correct as often because teams already understand what matters. The company moves faster not because it’s rushing, but because it’s unencumbered by unnecessary resistance.

True alignment isn’t just about meetings or goal-setting exercises. It’s about making clarity a constant, removing unnecessary weight and ensuring incentives reward alignment rather than empire-building. The less drag an organization has, the more effortlessly it can reach its destination.

Our mission is to empower organizations by fostering cultures of clarity and transparency, engagement and collaboration. Through innovative tools, best practices and partnership with leaders, we strive to unlock the competitive advantages inherent in healthy organizations.