Introduction

Ad-hoc approaches to keeping everyone informed and aligned are brittle, time-consuming, and tedious. Replace them with automated, structured communication loops to create a steady beat that keeps everyone in tight sync without all the effort and interruptions.

The problem is, meetings are too inefficient to keep up with the half-life of alignment. Without a more efficient approach, companies get caught in an alignment trap; you either have strong alignment and a velocity problem (AKA the “I do my work after work” problem), or weak alignment and a “cats in a bag” problem where teams are misaligned, working in the wrong direction, or actively undermining each other. Either end represents a serious risk.

The way out? Take a page from the Continuous Integration playbook by breaking alignment work down into smaller, higher-frequency, automated async loops. Daily within teams, weekly/bi-weekly/monthly across teams.

Daily loops keep individual teams in tight sync, and help individual contributors prioritize tasks, address budding issues, and coordinate action plans.

Weekly/bi-weekly/monthly loops — like updates on a team or company-level goal — keep multiple teams and entire companies aligned by providing everyone summary-level insight into where things stand.

This dual loop strategy cuts the alignment trap Gordian Knot. Everyone up and down the org has complete context day in, day out, and plenty of time for deep work. Even better, you have a full record of history of who’s done what and why, and nobody gets saddled with the frustrating, low-value process police job. It’s a game changer for working as a team.

Overcoming the alignment trap

This guide will show you how to use Steady's check-ins to stay coordinated and overcome the alignment trap on your team with daily check-ins, all while reducing meeting overhead and giving everyone time back to make actual progress.