The Cost of Coherence: Why Alignment Hurts Before It Heals

Everyone says they want alignment ... until they feel what it takes.

Alignment is not a calendar slot. It is not a workshop, a diagram, or a motivational slogan. Alignment is sacrifice. It is blood on the whiteboard, careers paused or redirected, comfort killed in service of something greater.

We used to laugh at the 'white paper warriors', those 1980s corridor diplomats clutching memos, organising meeting after meeting, chasing consensus while reality eroded. But today’s danger is subtler: the belief that alignment should feel good.

It does not. And that is exactly why it works.

Few recognise what alignment truly demands.

Because real alignment causes discomfort.

It causes discomfort when a project that someone cherishes must be discontinued because it no longer serves the collective interest. It causes discomfort when a team is required to abandon its custom tooling in favour of a standard that benefits the broader system. It causes discomfort when clarity replaces ambiguity, because ambiguity is comforting, and clarity reveals what no longer fits.

Yet these moments also demonstrate where seniority reveals its true role: enabling individuals to rise above personal preference and contribute to collective progress.

Alignment does not entail universal agreement. It involves everyone moving in the same direction, even if it requires some to leave familiar territory behind. This is when we measure engagement, when individuals choose to support the group trajectory over personal convenience or comfort.

Coherence Demands Tension

We frequently confuse coherence with harmony. Harmony is pleasing. Coherence is discipline. Alignment is not a song, but a tuning wire pulled tight until resonance is forced out of tension. It is not soft. It is sharp.

And tuning causes discomfort. It creates cognitive dissonance: a clash between what one has grown used to and what the system now demands. I once watched senior engineers fight to keep their custom pipeline alive. It had served them well for years. But it slowed the whole system. In the end, they let it go, not because they had to, but because they chose to. That was real seniority: not a title, but the maturity to let go of personal pride in favour of shared progress. A clash between what one has grown used to and what the system now demands.

This discomfort is necessary. It forges character, because real professionals go beyond their own satisfaction. They learn to disagree with respect, to say no without ego, and to carry decisions that honour the group over the self.

Victor Hugo once said: 'Inspiration is a moment, the rest is sweating.' Alignment works the same way: brief insight followed by persistent, sometimes painful effort.

Isolating domains does not mean abandoning alignment. Quite the opposite: constraints liberate. Domain isolation allows alignment to emerge from the bottom, from engineering practice and interface maturity, through to the top of shared priorities. Interchangeability, consistency, and mutual accountability are only possible when the foundations are truly coherent.

Anyone who has attempted to fix a team or refactor a system understands: the moment one strives for alignment, resistance surfaces. Not because individuals are malicious, but because misalignment is often easier. It permits local optimisation, comfort, ego, and habit. Alignment removes these crutches.

The Illusion of Progress

A misaligned system may appear productive. People remain busy. Roadmaps are full. However, energy leaks continuously, handoffs fail, feedback loops stall, and priorities clash. What appears to be progress is often entropy.

This is what one might call the 'white paper syndrome': a tendency observed as early as the 1980s and 1990s, when people would walk corridors armed with white papers and calendars full of alignment meetings, but without delivering tangible improvement. Meetings became rituals, not instruments.

Alignment meetings are necessary, as Verne Harnish has argued, but only if treated with discipline. They demand preparation, prioritisation, and purpose. As Elon Musk sharply noted: more than six people in a room, with some unprepared or unclear on priorities, is not collaboration, but a genuine theft of time. Time stolen from the teams doing the work, from the systems needing clarity, and from the outcomes everyone claims to support.

Alignment introduces discomfort not because it fails, but because it begins to close those leaks. Like surgery, it cuts, it removes, it reshapes. But it saves. And what it saves brings clarity. The energy that previously scattered must now concentrate. And focus requires letting go.

Friction as Signal

If an attempt to align produces no friction, it will likely reinforce surface-level agreement, not achieving structural coherence. True alignment creates tension at interfaces, between teams, technologies, and incentives.

These tensions should not be feared, and rather embraced as generative. They are the friction from which true direction emerges. They help all parties clarify their goals, articulate key results, refine the "now, next, later" narrative, and shape an emerging vision. The friction becomes useful. Not merely a sign of resistance, but a catalyst for shared understanding. It signals that we are beginning to know where we are going.

This is also where disciplined measurement matters. Adopting few, simple, honest metrics, paired to clear objectives, helps convert alignment from theatre into reality. Progress and success should be approached with enough humility to acknowledge when they point to failure. The goal is not comfort, but clarity.

Alignment is the art of saying no with respect, and still showing up the next day.

Flow Follows Discomfort

The positive aspect: once coherence is established, everything accelerates. Interfaces become clearer. Ownership stabilises. Decisions propagate more smoothly. Teams cease debating objectives and begin collaborating toward outcomes.

Alignment causes discomfort. And then it heals.

But only if one perseveres through the initial unease. Only if one interprets resistance not as defiance, but as proof of meaningful action.

Closing Reflection

Misalignment feels easier, until it corrodes everything. It is like rust: invisible at first, then irreversible.

Alignment feels more difficult just because it is. But it is also more honest. More human. More durable.

Because misalignment is not just a coordination problem. It is a moral one. It is what happens when people choose comfort over contribution, ownership over openness, busyness over coherence.

Real professionals know better. They embrace the tension. They disagree with clarity. They choose the hard truth over the soft escape.

Coherence is not the absence of tension. It is what gives tension a direction.

Alignment is not found. It is earned. Alignment feels more difficult, until it becomes the only reason things work at all.