The messy middle often looks like alignment. In my experience, it often shows up as silence. The quiet moment in a meeting when no one has questions or objections, even though multiple teams share responsibility for the outcome and have limited control over pieces of the work. The conversation stays at the transactional level: "Can it be done?" "Yes." What often goes unexamined are the details underneath. The dependencies. The handoffs. The assumptions. The circumstance
