# Fundamental Alignment - Synthesis B By:: [[Brian Heath]] 2026-01-03 The diagnosis of ignorance and indifference captures something real but risks becoming its own form of quietism. If workers don't know themselves and employers don't care, we are left waiting for conditions that may never arrive. What moves us forward is recognizing that the leaders who build alignment into their organizations did not emerge from nowhere. They were shaped by encounters, by examples, by the accumulated effect of someone else having gone first. The restaurant near me exists because someone chose to create it, but that someone almost certainly encountered something earlier. A model, a mentor, a moment of recognition that made the choice imaginable before it became actual. This points toward what actually creates the conditions for alignment. First, exposure. People cannot choose what they cannot see, and most workers have never witnessed an organization that treats their fulfillment as integral rather than accidental. Second, margin. Choosing alignment requires enough slack to make choices beyond survival, which means expanding access to stability is prerequisite to expanding access to purpose. Third, narrative. The stories we inherit about work are either false or so vague as to be useless. What we lack are honest accounts of how people actually found alignment, including the luck and the stumbling and the mentors who appeared at crucial moments. Those of us who teach, who lead, who build things are not merely pursuing our own alignment. We are generating exposure, creating margin where we can, and telling truer stories. This is how cultivation works. Not through systems redesigned from above but through density increased from within until the exceptions become the expectation. #### Related Items [[Work]] [[Leadership]] [[Environment]] [[Models]] [[Organization]] [[Solidarity]]