Everyone can agree with a proposal without agreeing on what the decision actually means.

Several weeks after a very positive meeting, the project starts to slow down. Engineering requests another technical review. Operations questions the implementation schedule. Finance wants a different justification for the investment.

At the meeting itself, none of this was visible. Engineering was satisfied with the technical concept, Operations saw reliability improvements, Purchasing found the price acceptable, and management expressed support. No significant objections.

The salesperson concluded the organization was aligned. In hindsight, the agreement was real — what was missing was a shared understanding of what had been agreed.

The same yes, different meanings

In complex B2B decisions, multiple stakeholders can support the same project for entirely different reasons — and each of those reasons can carry different assumptions about what happens next.

The engineer supports the solution because the specifications are met — and assumes further testing will precede implementation.

Operations supports it because reliability should improve — and expects installation during the next planned shutdown.

Management supports the investment as part of a broader objective — and believes the project can be completed before the end of the financial year.

Everyone agreed to proceed. They did not agree to proceed in the same way.

This is not bad faith. Every individual position is reasonable. The difficulty is that expressions of support are observable signals, while the expectations behind them are not. "Yes, that looks good" can mean the concept is technically acceptable, or that it is worth investigating, or that the organization is genuinely ready. From the outside, the three situations look remarkably similar.

Alignment is revealed at the moment of translation

The problem deepens when several individual expressions of support are read as collective commitment. Agreement is personal. Alignment requires the individual perspectives to fit together — and that fit often first becomes visible when stakeholders begin translating the discussion into their own responsibilities.

That translation is where misalignment surfaces, which is why projects so often wobble after a positive meeting rather than during one. The moment "we support this" turns into "we will do X, by date Y, with budget Z," previously compatible expectations start colliding with each other and with the calendar.

Testing alignment deliberately

Perfect agreement on every detail is not realistic, and pursuing it turns meetings into negotiations. What is realistic is checking whether the fundamental expectations match:

• Who considers the technical evaluation complete?

• What conditions remain before approval?

• Does everyone understand the proposed timeline in the same way?

The answers either converge on a shared picture of the project — or reveal that the consensus was apparent rather than real.

Agreement can start a decision process.

Alignment is what determines whether it survives contact with dates, budgets, and responsibilities.

From the book

Agreement, alignment and the friction that appears when stakeholder expectations do not match are explored in more depth in Chapters 7 and 8 of Sales Between the Lines, including how timing, stakeholders and the wider context can change what an agreed decision actually means.