Communications strategies should align everyone on the priorities. But to get to that alignment, sometimes you have to surface and overcome disagreement.
Nobody likes disharmony – right? When you’re responsible for a comms or marketing strategy, it can feel like a chore to wade through all the steps to get there: opposing views, protect everyone’s feelings, and somehow navigate towards a strategy that can be signed off and executed. In the end I’m sure some of us are delegating all that to ChatGPT and phoning it in with a “strategy” that looks solid on paper but hasn’t done the hard work of alignment first.
Sometimes organisations come to me when they can no longer ignore tensions that are undermining their strategy. It might not be something huge – maybe even just a small disagreement on what the top priority is, or a fight for budget allocations that can be resolved through discussion. But if you want to get to the result – a strategy that you can implement, that has buy-in and the resources it needs, and that most importantly can actually be delivered – those little issues have to be addressed and overcome.
Does it really matter if everyone is aligned on the strategy? Like, really really?
Having a clear strategy matters, of course. Not just for our professional satisfaction (though that counts!) and accountability, but also because misalignment affects organisational outcomes. Unclear expectations are a driver of low employee engagement scores, a predictor for performance and retention. In 2024, a global study of employee engagement found engagement at just 21 percent, a historic low. When people aren’t aligned, they disconnect from the work that should matter most.
Misalignment shows up in different forms in the purpose driven organisations we work with. Sometimes boards and leadership teams prioritise different goals. Often external-facing departments (marcomms, fundraising, advocacy) tend to speak a different language than technical departments that run programmes, and it takes work and exposure to reach a real common ground even when the goals are shared.
Ground truth: team alignment issues we’ve seen first hand
We’ve conducted over a dozen digital communications audits of nonprofits in the last 18 months. A comms audit is a deep dive into the online footprint of an organisation, backed up by inputs from the comms team. We’ve had rave reviews from organisations who have received their comms audit full of practical recommendations. So to ground-truth this blog we took a look at the findings from real organisations facing real everyday comms challenges. Here’s what we found:
- Communications teams are not always sure who the priority audiences are.
In one AMS comms audit last spring, staff listed multiple primary audiences including NGOs, comms professionals, middle managers, and consultants. All relevant – but there was no clear focus among all these different interests. When we dived deeper, we found that the lack of alignment on which audience to prioritise had led to overstuffed messaging and too many calls to action.
- Teams may be clear on values, but not always on direction.
Teams we’ve worked with consistently express strong motivation and belief in communications as a lever for impact. Excellent! But they may still struggle to articulate what success looks like in practice. We’ve asked many teams about how they use data to drive decisions, and whether roles are clear. Surprisingly often, we find limited shared clarity on goals and measures of success.
- Unspoken misalignment leads to lower quality communications
Alignment gaps often surface as inconsistent visuals, uneven tone or fragmented communications output across channels. One organisation we worked with noted visible misalignment between the website, social visuals, and templates. Teams were working hard but not from a single, shared vision.
The good news: there are simple fixes
These issues might seem basic – like, of course we know what audiences we are targeting. Of course we have a strategy that guides all our comms work… But when you scratch the surface, sometimes this clarity is not shared by others, or the strategy sits in a folder last opened months ago.
The good news is that a quick and simple process can often fix these issues. An investment of time in reviewing or revising a communications strategy will pay off throughout the years.
External facilitation can help if you’re stuck
To fix a misaligned strategy we often have to address entrenched issues that people aren’t used to talking about. This is when the design of a conversation really matters. Facilitators help teams slow down enough to articulate differences, unpack assumptions, and reframe shared challenges. While direct quantitative outcomes are rare in broad literature, practitioners observe that structured facilitation brings sharper focus and more inclusive dialogue in complex situations, especially in research teams and collaborative settings.
This matters because teams who can name their disagreements early can decide what to prioritise. They avoid hidden resentments or unspoken assumptions that later derail execution. If you’re planning to facilitate a session to move your strategy forward, check out our blog on facilitation mistakes to avoid. And if you are struggling to sort out differing views or hold a safe space for colleagues to share their views, an external facilitator can often help.
The win: better strategy and execution
Once differences are surfaced and discussed, teams make clearer choices:
- They decide what to keep and what to let go.
- They define who owns what.
- They settle on common language that reflects shared intent rather than hidden compromise.
Once aligned internally, communications strategy becomes easier to shape with confidence and purpose. This is why we start a strategy process with its building blocks: values, vision and goals. Then we can get to the fun bits like design and tactics, once everyone is sure of the big picture direction.
Expect honest work, and expect it to pay off
Aligning a team is not always comfortable. It’s harder than putting a prompt into an AI chatbot. You have to prepare, show up, and hold space for ambiguity and disagreement. But organisations that invest in early alignment save time and money later. Clear internal thinking directly improves the quality of communications outputs, and increases teams’ confidence in their work. If the challenges in this blog post resonate with you, we hope you will give alignment a try. And if you need a hand, reach out to us anytime.
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AMS is a boutique communications agency that helps organisations with their communications strategy and execution. We design strategy sessions that support early alignment and deliver outcomes throughout the strategy period. To find out more, visit our homepage or get in touch.
