I’ve sat on both sides of the board table, as a CEO reporting to one and as a facilitator hired to fix one. Here’s what I’ve learned: most boards that look misaligned aren’t actually fighting about strategy.
They’re fighting about airtime. Somewhere along the way, two or three members stopped feeling heard. Maybe their questions got rushed at the end of a long agenda. Maybe a big decision happened between meetings. It doesn’t take much. And once someone feels unheard, they start voting no on things they actually agree with.
The fix isn’t a better slide deck. It’s a better room. When I design a board session, every member speaks in the first ten minutes, before positions harden. We put the real question on the table, not the safe one. And we agree, out loud, on what deciding together will look like.
You can tell alignment is real when people can repeat each other’s arguments accurately, even the ones they disagree with. That’s the bar. Not unanimity. Understanding.
If your board is circling the same conversation for the third meeting in a row, the strategy isn’t stuck. The listening is. Fix that first.