The Alignment Test.
Three instruments that cannot lie for long: your calendar, your capital and your values.
The Creator's Journey · Chapter X, The Power of Alignment
Alignment sounds abstract until you test it. Most founders are not misaligned because they are bad people. They are misaligned because they drift. A company starts as an expression of purpose and slowly becomes a set of obligations. The calendar fills. The capital comes with expectations. One day you look up and realize you are running something you would not have chosen to start.
So I use three instruments. None of them can lie for long.
- Calendar
- Where did your hours actually go in the last four weeks? If you say your purpose is building great teams and you spent nine percent of your time with your people, you have a data point.
- Capital
- Where are the dollars going, the company’s and your own? Money is a vote. Founders who say they care about long-term value and optimize every decision for the next round are telling you what they believe.
- Values
- Name the three or four things you would not compromise. Then look at your last few hard decisions. Did those values decide them, or did convenience, fear or ego?
When all three instruments agree, you are aligned. When they disagree, the calendar and the capital are telling the truth and the values statement is telling a story.
Your decisions about allocating your personal time, energy, and talent ultimately shape your life’s strategy.
Strategy is what you fund
Clayton Christensen made the same point in “How Will You Measure Your Life?” A company’s real strategy is not its stated plan. It is where it puts its resources. A life works the same way. Christensen warned that allocation choices can make your life turn out very different from what you intended.
Peter Drucker gave the practical method decades earlier in The Effective Executive. Do not trust your memory of where your time goes. Record it, then manage it. Memory flatters. The calendar does not.
Correct, do not confess
A gap between the instruments is not a reason for shame. It is a reason for a course correction. Flight crews do not feel guilty about drift. They correct for it.
- Pull four weeks of calendarSort the hours into the categories you say matter most. Total them.
- Follow the moneyList where the company’s capital and your own went last quarter. Compare it with what you say you value.
- Replay three hard callsFor each one, write what actually decided it: a value, or convenience, fear or ego.
- Fix one contradiction this weekBlock the time, cancel the meeting or delegate the task. Not someday.
Quick answers
How do you know if your business is aligned with your values?
Rob Frasca’s alignment test checks three instruments: your calendar, your capital and your values. When they disagree, he says the calendar and the capital are telling the truth and the values statement is telling a story.
What should you do when your calendar contradicts your values?
Rob Frasca treats it as drift, not failure. Find one contradiction and fix it the same week by blocking time, cancelling a meeting or delegating the task.