You can meet with the CEO of your company and craft an awesome strategy for taking your business to the next level, but if you do not have the agreement of middle management you have nothing.

You can meet with countless people on the ground who know the real problems, but if you can’t quantify it in the way that their leadership can understand, you have nothing.

You can read the greatest business book that lays out a superior path forward through industry best practices, but if you can’t join the solutions it promises to problems that are clear within your business, you have nothing.

You can craft a strategy with a respected leader in your organization to bring an initiative forward, but if her peers don’t see the value in the initiative, you have nothing.

You can even get an entire development organization rallied around a particular initiative, but if the sales organization doesn’t see that as adding value to its goals and the company’s profitability, you have nothing.

Value isn’t found in leadership, books, best practices, departmental unity, or from those who do the work. Value is found at the intersection of those things, where everyone sees the problem in the same way and will do their part in solving it.

My life has been transformed by acknowledging the immense power of alignment.