Welcome back to The COO Solution Podcast! In this solo episode, host Derek Fredrickson unpacks one of the most overlooked yet critical elements of scaling a business: team alignment.
If your team is working hard but progress still feels off or if you’re frustrated that projects move forward but don’t quite match your bigger vision, this episode is for you. Derek reveals why alignment isn’t just a buzzword but the foundation of efficiency, accountability, and scalable growth.
You’ll learn how to identify signs of misalignment, the role a COO plays in bridging the gap between vision and execution, and practical steps to clarify roles, strengthen accountability, and build a culture where everyone is rowing in the same direction.
In This Episode:
- [00:54] The Hard Truth – Why your team’s alignment determines your capacity for growth.
- [01:59] The Cost of Misalignment – How inefficiency, confusion, and missed objectives slow progress.
- [05:48] The COO as the Bridge – Why a second-in-command is essential for turning vision into reality.
- [09:09] The Alignment Audit – Three key questions to evaluate your team’s clarity and priorities.
- [13:37] Common Challenges – Overlapping roles, top performers bogged down, and chasing tactics over strategy.
- [14:37] Four Steps to Align Your Team – Clarify vision, define roles, establish accountability systems, and review regularly.
- [18:16] Culture of Alignment – Communication, empowerment, and recognition as lasting drivers of growth.
- [21:45] Your Action Step – Map out roles and responsibilities and identify one misalignment to correct this week.
📌 Why This Matters
Without alignment, even the most talented teams and innovative ideas fall short. Scaling requires more than a system. It demands that your people, roles, and priorities connect seamlessly with your vision. This episode gives you the framework to realign your team and unlock growth with clarity and confidence.
✅ Action Steps for Listeners:
- Audit your team: Do roles, responsibilities, and accountability connect with your vision?
- Identify at least one area of misalignment and correct it this week.
- Create a “clarity document” to communicate roles, priorities, and expectations.
- Consider how a fractional COO can help bridge the gap between your vision and your team’s execution.
Resources & Links:
Transcript:
00:01
Derek Fredrickson
Have you ever felt like your team is working hard, but somehow nothing seems aligned? Tasks get done, deadlines are met, but somehow the bigger picture still feels off? This is a common challenge for founders and entrepreneurs as they scale their businesses. You might even feel frustrated that despite all the effort, progress isn’t matching your vision. And that’s what we’re unpacking today.
Welcome back to the COO Solution podcast. I’m your host, Derek Fredricksen, and today’s episode is about team alignment, one of the most overlooked yet critical elements in scaling a business. And so today in this episode, we’ll explore, number one, why team alignment is the key to efficiency, accountability and scalable growth.
00:58
Derek Fredrickson
Number two, how a COO, or a second in command or an integrator can bridge the gap between your vision and your team’s execution. Actionable steps to evaluate, clarify and realign your team so everyone is rowing in the same direction. So, if you’re listening to this and ever wondered why your team isn’t hitting its potential or why things feel chaotic even with talented people, this episode is for you.
Alignment with your team isn’t just a buzzword. It’s not just a catchphrase. It’s the foundation for every high-performing company. You can have an amazing team, incredible products and services and programs, or groundbreaking ideas, but without alignment within your team, results will never match your vision. And here’s why team alignment is so crucial. Efficiency. Number one. Teams that understand the big picture don’t waste time on misdirected efforts.
01:59
Derek Fredrickson
They get the goal of where you’re going. Number two is clarity. Everyone knows their role and their responsibilities and how it contributes to the overall vision of the business. Accountability. When expectations are clear, the team takes ownership. They take responsibility of what they are in charge of doing. And lastly, scale. Without alignment, your business can’t scale effectively or efficiently and gaps appear, bottlenecks form and progress slows down. So here’s the reality check around why alignment is crucial. Even great teams often fail to reach their potential because roles aren’t defined, responsibilities overlap or priorities are unclear. That’s why alignment needs to be intentional, consistent and measured.
03:08
Derek Fredrickson
So let’s get into what I’ve discovered are the five really main pillars, if you will, and core ideas around this topic of how to align your team with your vision and mission. All right, so let’s start with number one, which is the basics.
03:23
Derek Fredrickson
Right.
03:24
Derek Fredrickson
What does team alignment really mean? Okay, well, the alignment is when every team member understands the business vision, their role in executing that vision, and how their work contributes to the overall goals. Okay, but there are signs of misalignment, Right? For example, confusion about responsibilities or priorities.
03:44
Derek Fredrickson
Who’s doing this and who’s doing that? And is this something I’m supposed to be doing? Is this something that somebody else is supposed to be doing?
03:49
Derek Fredrickson
Right.
03:50
Derek Fredrickson
There’s that confusion and complexity, and you can’t scale confusion or complexity.
03:55
Derek Fredrickson
There’s also frequent rework or missed deadlines. For example, we’re doing the same thing over and over again as opposed to having a more systematic, automated approach. Or we’re doing things and they’re. Their tasks are falling through the cracks. We’re missing opportunities. You know, deadlines are getting avoided and projects get delayed. And lastly, employees are working hard, but they’re missing critical business objectives.
04:21
Derek Fredrickson
Right.
04:21
Derek Fredrickson
This is not about working harder. It’s about working smarter. And so your team members might be working hard, but is it really moving the needle? Is it really actually producing the result and getting you the objective accomplished to meet your goal?
04:35
Derek Fredrickson
Okay.
04:36
Derek Fredrickson
And the impact of misalignment within your team is that it leads to these inefficiencies, this frustration and slowed growth. And your talented people can only perform if the team structure supports your business vision.
04:50
Derek Fredrickson
Right.
04:51
Derek Fredrickson
And so if there is a feeling amongst you as the entrepreneur or your team members that there are these inefficiencies and frustrations and slow growth, and we feel like we’re working really hard, but we’re not really getting where we want to be going. That is the impact of misalignment. Okay, so that’s point number one, which is what does team alignment really mean?
Number two is the role of the COO, chief operating officer, or second in command, or an integrator in driving and owning that alignment. All right, and the component of the COO driving alignment is that they are the bridge from vision to execution. This is where a fractional COO comes in. They translate the founder’s vision into actionable steps. They ensure that strategy and operations are connected, that everyone knows what success looks like, and that resources are allocated effectively.
05:48
Derek Fredrickson
This is critical for entrepreneurs to understand that the bridge from vision to execution is not just with the entrepreneur and not just with individual team members. There is what I call the gap in between from vision to execution. And you need a bridge to address the gap. You need the glue to hold that together, to make the vision happen into reality. And that’s what the role of a COO does. And there are some key responsibilities for the right COO to ensure that there is team alignment, right? Create clarity around priorities and goals so team members know what they’re doing and where they’re going, defining the responsibilities that are associated with those roles. So team members know this is what I’m responsible for, this is part of my role. This is what I need to be doing every day or every week or every month.
06:44
Derek Fredrickson
They also need to be building and managing accountability systems, right? Checking in with team members to ensure that they’re feeling satisfied with the work that they’re doing, that they’re feeling confident, that they’re feeling clear, that they’re feeling capable in what they’re doing and ensuring that they’re doing it well so that they can be working at a higher level and do things more efficiently and more effectively. And lastly, the role of the COO is to identify bottlenecks and gaps in execution. They are that air traffic controller. They are looking at what’s working and what’s not working. And if there are bottlenecks or things that are getting in the way, it’s their role to address and remove that bottleneck so we can have a fluid system of execution to the vision.
07:29
Derek Fredrickson
So, for example, here at the COO Solution, when we work with a business as a fractional coo, one of the first things we do is map out who owns what, right? We kind of take a look at the scope of the team and really get very clear. You know, what are the people that you have on the team, what are their roles, what are the responsibilities? And start asking questions, right? This is not about judgment. This is not about pointing fingers and asking, why are you doing this and why are you doing that? It’s not about that. That’s not our style. But we really kind of take a look at do we have the right people that are in the right seats and that everyone understands how their work contributes to the bigger picture. And that’s when alignment really starts to happen, right?
08:08
Derek Fredrickson
And that goes from the top all the way to the bottom and all the way in between, right? So when team members, whether they’re a bookkeeper, they’re a webmaster, your salesperson, the person that does social media, customer service, your copywriter, whatever it is, it’s one thing that they know what they’re doing and how to do it.
08:23
Derek Fredrickson
But do they understand how their work contributes to the bigger picture, that’s where team alignment and mapping your vision and your mission with your team really starts to take shape. Because when they can see where you’re going and how their part is contributing to how we’re going to get there, that’s when the magic really happens. Okay, so that’s point number two, which is the role of the COO in driving alignment. Let’s move on to number three, which is assessing your current team alignment. So there are some key questions that we want to be asking, and this is part of what we do again, when we work with clients at the COO solution to really understand do we have team alignment in place? You know, is it strong, is it positive, or is it weak and kind of, you know, bringing the team down?
09:09
Derek Fredrickson
All right, so there’s a couple of key questions that you can ask. Number one, does everyone know the company’s vision and mission?
09:16
Derek Fredrickson
Right.
09:16
Derek Fredrickson
This is really critical do you have a vision for the business? Do you have a mission?
09:21
Derek Fredrickson
Right.
09:21
Derek Fredrickson
That could be core values or what you stand for, what you believe, or where do you think you’re going in one year’s time, in three years time, maybe in 10 years time? What’s the real big picture of what your company is doing? But also more importantly, why? Why are you doing this? It’s not just to make money, but it’s also what’s the bigger impact? What’s the mission? And does everybody on the team know that and are they aware of that and are reminded of that on a consistent basis? The second key question is, are roles clearly defined and understood?
09:52
Derek Fredrickson
Right.
09:53
Derek Fredrickson
Roles might be clearly defined, but they may not be fully understood. And they might understand what the role is, but that’s not necessarily in alignment with what you think the role is defined as. So there’s this synergy, there’s this connection between the two that roles are defined and they’re also clearly understood. And the third question is, are priorities and outcomes communicated consistently?
10:16
Derek Fredrickson
Right.
10:17
Derek Fredrickson
These are the objectives, these are the projects, this is the result. This is the goal that we’re looking at. One of the things that we do with our clients at the COO solution is we identify in the first 90 days five high level objectives that we want to accomplish in the work that we do with a client.
10:33
Derek Fredrickson
Right.
10:33
Derek Fredrickson
I always say that these are realistic, but a bit of a stretch and above and beyond what you’re already doing in the day to day.
10:40
Derek Fredrickson
Right.
10:40
Derek Fredrickson
Because we don’t work with clients that just want to maintain the status quo. They’re looking to scale, they’re looking to grow, they’re looking to get to the next big level. And so we identify five high level objectives. And within each one of those objectives, we clearly articulate this is the goal, this is the result and this is the timeline.
11:00
Derek Fredrickson
Right?
11:00
Derek Fredrickson
So the goal is what we want to accomplish. The result is what are we going to achieve, whether it’s financial impact or more clients or better system or whatever it might be. And the timeline, right, the first 30 days or the first two months, whatever that might be. So goal, result, timeline, and that’s our framework, right. But think of it as a alignment is in three buckets, right? It’s vision, roles, accountability and with your team, ask yourself, are all three connected? If one is missing, your team isn’t fully aligned, right. You may have the vision and your team feels like they’re accountable to what they’re doing, but maybe they’re not clear on their role.
11:41
Derek Fredrickson
Right.
11:41
Derek Fredrickson
Or they are clear in their role and they have a good sense of holding themselves accountable, but they don’t know where they’re going.
11:47
Derek Fredrickson
Right.
11:47
Derek Fredrickson
They don’t really know what the vision is.
11:49
Derek Fredrickson
Right.
11:49
Derek Fredrickson
And so the last one is they know the vision and they know the role, but nobody’s holding them accountable. And so we don’t have the clarity if they’re working in a efficient and effective way. So you need all three: vision, roles and accountability.
And there are some challenges, right? When you’re assessing your current team alignment, there are some common challenges that we have uncovered that I want to share with you. Number one is there are overlapping responsibilities are confusing, right? Again, if people aren’t clear and they’re kind of sharing responsibilities, like I do this, but I also do that and that person does the same thing. And it’s like we’re being redundant, like we’re stepping on each other’s toes. And this is where I often say sometimes the little things get in the way of the big things.
12:27
Derek Fredrickson
Right?
12:27
Derek Fredrickson
And so these overlapping responsibilities are confusing and they can lead to bottlenecks, right? And then number two, common challenge, top performers are doing tasks that others can handle, right? You may have some members of your leadership team or senior members of your team that maybe own a particular function, maybe they own operations or they own finance, but they’re doing tasks that others could handle. So for example, in the finance function, you know, you may have a controller or maybe you have like a fractional CFO who’s still doing the books and records, right? They’re still in QuickBooks, they’re still doing the bookkeeping, that’s probably not the best use of their time.
13:03
Derek Fredrickson
Right.
13:04
Derek Fredrickson
You’ve heard me share this before in this podcast that this is always looking at across the organization, not just for the entrepreneur, but for team members. You know, if they’re doing things that others could be doing, or they could delegate or automate or outsource or streamline, you know, that’s going to level up their responsibility and level up their availability to focus on bigger picture initiatives, bigger picture ideas like let the fractional CFO be in the senior leadership seat in finance. They don’t need to be bogged down in the details of the day to day of the bookkeeping. You need somebody to do that. But that can be a bookkeeper.
13:37
Derek Fredrickson
Okay.
13:38
Derek Fredrickson
And the third common challenge is that teams are chasing tactical work without understanding strategic priorities.
13:44
Derek Fredrickson
Right?
13:44
Derek Fredrickson
They’re kind of, you know, whack-a-moling things. I’m doing this and I’m doing that. I’m working on this over here, I’m doing that task over here. But do they really have a cohesive understanding about how all of that work comes together in achieving, like the big picture strategy?
13:58
Derek Fredrickson
Or are they just kind of going through the motions and just getting stuff done and then just going on to the next day and doing it all over again? They need to be aligned with the strategic priority, with the plan. This is why we identify those objectives when we work with clients. So everybody knows where we’re going. We’re all rowing in the same boat and going in the same direction. Okay, so that’s number three, which is assessing your current team alignment. Moving on to number four is like, let’s talk about some of the steps to align your team. And so we have identified four steps that help aligning your team, whether they’re not aligned at all or there’s room for improvement. Okay, step number one, clarify the vision and mission.
14:37
Derek Fredrickson
Right?
14:37
Derek Fredrickson
So this is your job as the entrepreneur with the help of a fractional COO. But hold a team meeting or a workshop or some sort of get together to review your mission and your vision. Share your vision. Make sure every team member understands the why behind the work. Now, before you share that, you need to get really clear on what is your vision and what is your mission. So first, develop the vision and mission before you share that. Now you can share that openly with the team and offer an opportunity for feedback or questions. And that’s great to get their reflection and input. But the idea is that first establish the vision and mission, then share it and the team member understands the why behind the work. Okay, so that’s step number one. Step number two, define roles.
15:25
Derek Fredrickson
clearly. Audit every role in the business. What are their responsibilities? Where do they overlap with others? What are the key deliverables? This is one of the first things that we do when we work with the client. Because oftentimes in our COO work with the client, roles are not clearly defined. Team members are uncertain about where they belong and what they’re doing. And they don’t really know what their responsibilities are. They may have an idea, but that might be a different idea than what you have as the idea of what their responsibilities are. So we need to define their role and their responsibilities. That’s something that a fractional COO can do. You don’t have to do that. Their job is to understand and to ask the questions, what are your responsibilities? What are you accountable for?
16:07
Derek Fredrickson
What do you do on a day to day basis? What do you own? And again, this is not about pointing fingers or judging. It’s getting clarity. And with clarity we can then have the understanding about, “Great, your role is clearly defined. You understand your responsibilities. You know what’s expected of you.” And team members want that. They want that clarity so that they get the confidence to go out and do really good work. Okay.
Step number three, establish accountability systems. Implement clear metrics and KPIs. You can create dashboards. Your fractional COO can create dashboards or weekly check-ins to track progress alignment. Without accountability, it won’t stick, it won’t last. And so when we put things on paper and create accountability structures, for example in marketing, right, the marketing manager is accountable for how many leads we generate on a week to week basis.
16:57
Derek Fredrickson
And that’s tracked in a dashboard, in a scorecard with KPIs. And if we’re off track with the number of leads that are being generated, we need to ask the question, why are we off track? What are we doing to get on track? How are you going to take ownership of that? And so numbers don’t lie. And so when you create accountability systems based on metrics and KPIs, everybody knows that they’re tied to an objective and a result that is very quantifiable. Okay? So they can really see it and understand it. And then step number four is regularly review and adjust. This is not team alignment nirvana. You’ve done it once and it’s never needed to be done again.
17:34
Derek Fredrickson
Right?
17:34
Derek Fredrickson
You’re constantly evolving and shaping your team. Team members come and go, they leave, they join, they move in different directions. And so there’s always an opportunity to realign your team or review and adjust if needed. And the reason is simple. Alignment is dynamic. It’s never stagnant. So you need to revisit roles, responsibilities and priorities as your business grows to ensure your team continues to operate cohesively. It’s revisiting these accountability systems, revisiting these dashboards, revisiting the roles and making sure that they’re clear. Maybe they were clear six months ago, but they’re not clear anymore because their responsibilities have changed. Maybe your vision and mission was established last year, but it’s evolved. You’ve evolved.
18:16
Derek Fredrickson
And so you need to continue to cascade that to your team so they understand the vision and the mission at the top, their role and what is required of them to help achieve that. Vision and mission, accountability systems that go in place to hold them accountable and continually review and adjust. So that’s number four, steps to align your team.
Lastly, number five, building a culture of alignment. This is probably the most important because again, alignment is not something that you do and then you’re done and you never do it. It’s something that you want to instill as a value. It’s part of the, “this is how we do things around here” in the culture of your company. And you could do this in three ways. Number one, communication. Encourage open feedback and transparent communication. Your team should always feel comfortable sharing progress and challenges.
19:06
Derek Fredrickson
Things that are left unspoken usually tend to kind of manifest themselves into these bottlenecks, into these challenges, into these complexities that end up becoming big boulders that you need to overcome. Let’s identify the pebbles when they’re in the early stages. And that is created by offering an opportunity for team members to provide feedback and have an open, vulnerable, transparent communication. What’s working? What’s not working? Are you unclear? If so, how can we get more clear? Okay, so just have open communication. Number two, empowerment. Empower your team to make decisions with their roles. This reduces bottlenecks and allows you to focus on higher level strategy.
19:49
Derek Fredrickson
Okay.
19:50
Derek Fredrickson
So you can empower your team to take ownership even more.
19:55
Derek Fredrickson
Right.
19:55
Derek Fredrickson
Evolve and up level what they’re accountable for. Empower them to make decisions with the right understanding of what to do and how to do it. And I always say, empower them to make decisions, but at the end of the day, if they’re not perfectly clear on the best decision to make, then the point of no decision is better than making a decision. And it’s fine for team members to say, I’m unclear, I’m uncertain. Can you clarify this for me? Right, so we want to empower them to make decisions, but also offer the opportunity that they’re not 100% clear. Don’t make the wrong decision. Always speak up and ask for guidance or support or clarity. Okay. It’s okay to ask for help. Number three is recognition. Acknowledge and celebrate when team alignment leads to results.
20:40
Derek Fredrickson
This reinforces the behavior and the culture that you want to sustain. So if you feel like people are really understanding your vision and your mission and they’re aligning with the roles and things are just running like clockwork and they’re getting results that are tied to the objectives and it’s giving you more motivation. Celebrate that. Acknowledge that’s a real positive element in team culture to make everybody feel, like I said, they’re rowing not only in the same boat, but they’re rowing in the same direction. Okay, so those are the five elements of aligning your team with your vision and mission with the involvement and support of a fractional coo. Number one, what team alignment really means. Number two, the role of the COO and driving alignment. Number three, assessing your current team alignment. Number four, steps to align your team.
21:28
Derek Fredrickson
And lastly, number five, building a culture of alignment. Okay, so here’s your action step for today. I hope you enjoyed those five pillars of aligning your team with your vision and mission. So here’s your action step for today. Here’s a takeaway.
21:45
Derek Fredrickson
You can, with the help of a fractional coo, begin to identify and map out your team’s roles and responsibilities and maybe identify at least one area of misalignment that is slowing execution.
21:57
Derek Fredrickson
Right.
21:58
Derek Fredrickson
When you start to put things on paper and document roles and responsibilities, it’ll become clear to you where there is some misalignment. Again, a team member may think they’re doing something in one area where you’re expecting them to actually focus on something else. And so that is misalignment.
22:11
Derek Fredrickson
Right.
22:11
Derek Fredrickson
They’re going in one direction when you expect them to be going in another. Okay. And then from that, you can create a doc, I call it a clarity document or some sort of a meeting agenda to communicate roles, priorities and expectations to the team by the end of this week.
22:25
Derek Fredrickson
Right.
22:25
Derek Fredrickson
So you could start to get some momentum and some progress by first identifying where that alignment may be out of whack.
22:33
Derek Fredrickson
Right.
22:33
Derek Fredrickson
Where that misalignment may be in place, and have the conversation that goes back to open transparent communication and discuss that with the team members so they really get understanding that we need to get more aligned on your role and what you’re doing. Remember, alignment isn’t a one time activity. It’s a continuous process that ensures your team can execute on your vision efficiently while you focus on growth and strategy.
I hope you enjoyed today’s episode on aligning your team with your vision and mission. It’s something that we work on and do continuously here at the COO Solution, not only within our own organization, but with all of our clients that we work with where we provide fractional COO services. So I hope you enjoyed today’s episode.
23:15
Derek Fredrickson
And listen, if you really enjoyed this episode, I’d love for you to share it with another business owner, founder, CEO, entrepreneur that you think could get some value from this. And listen, you may be wondering, could I use the benefit and support and structure and strategy and guidance of a fractional coo? Let’s find out. You can take our free quiz which is @thecoosolution.com and you’ll get a personalized report to understand where you are currently in your business, what’s working, what’s not working, and if a fractional COO can provide the structure, the guidance and the support to have your vision become reality, right to have the fractional CEO be the glue between your vision and execution.
So thanks for tuning in to this episode of the COO Solution podcast. I would love to hear from you if you have any comments or feedback.
24:03
Derek Fredrickson
And in the next episode we continue to tackle more topics around delegation and freeing yourself from the day to day and getting out of the operational overwhelm in your business so you could focus on the big vision and the big idea. And so, looking forward to seeing you on the next episode. And thanks for tuning in.