Behind the Firewall: Notes of a Punk CIO

“Let’s align on the alignment plan before the actual alignment meeting.”

Does this sound familiar?

If you’ve spent more than a week in a corporate environment, you’ve likely been trapped in the ritual. There’s the pre-read for the pre-alignment, followed by a sync to prep the sponsor for the real alignment, which itself is just a warm-up for somecommittee, which… sends you back and asks for more alignment. This isn’t about alignment it’s about survival.

The rise of PowerPoint Pete and Textbook Tina

Pete’s slides are usually perfect,  Tina’s frameworks are bulletproof: together, they represent the well-intentioned but over-engineered world we’ve created—one where we confuse presentation  and meetings with progress.

It’s not wrong to prepare! No one wants to walk into a meeting unarmed. But at what cost? – like pretty much always, balance is key.

So why we keep doing this?

The obsession with pre-aligning everything isn’t because we love slides and meetings. It’s because we fear what happens without them.

• We fear conflict 
• There is lack of trust 
• Decision paralysis and lack of accountability

My colleague and friend one of these days had a comment that enlightened me: actually not having energy to pre-align, probably eventually took us to a better outcome. Pre-alignments often exist to avoid being “wrong in public.” Or to oppose anyone in public.  But that’s exactly what great teams embrace: debate, disagree and learn. When we trade a real conversation for  one-on-one pre-alignments, we don’t protect people—we isolate them. And we create a false sense of consensus.

Where it sometimes helps

Again, it’s not about chaos, it’s about balance, as sometimes, this stuff works.

• In multi-country programs and complex matrix environments
• When big risks are involved, you need to surface blind spots and pressure-test assumptions.

But these tools help only when they serve the outcome. Not when they become the outcome.

A different way to work

Here’s how we try to flip the model with my leadership:

• 🎯 Start with outcome clarity – What are we trying to achieve? What is the value we get?
• 🤝 Empower cross-functional teams and let them align with each other.
• 🧬 Reduce approval chains where possible – Fewer gates = faster flow = more ownership.

+ 1 because I talk about presentations as well:

• 🧠 Use decks for clarity and structure for discussions (debates), not consensus.

This isn’t anti-structure. It’s pro-trust.