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On a frozen January afternoon in 1982, Air Florida Flight 90 sat on the runway at Washington National Airport. Snow drifted across the tarmac, visibility was low, and ice clung to the wings and engine inlets. Inside the cockpit, Captain Larry Wheaton studied the power readings with a growing sense of unease. “That doesn’t look right, does it?” he said softly—less a warning than a quiet appeal.
His first officer sensed the danger too. The instruments looked wrong. The engines felt slow. Nearby aircraft reported dangerous levels of ice. Yet both men excused their concerns, hoping the other would carry the burden of truth. Their unease grew, but neither spoke with the clarity reality demanded. Weak signals accumulated around them like snow flakes.
Moments later, Flight 90 lifted off with too little thrust. The engines stalled almost instantly, strangled by ice. The aircraft plunged into the Potomac River, killing seventy-eight people.
There was no mechanical failure.
The system did not break.
The humans did.
This cockpit was not simply a tragedy—it was a perfect illustration of moral misalignment: the quiet internal distortions that disable clear perception, distort orientation, and prevent leaders from acting on reality as it actually is. The pilots were not incompetent or malicious. They were human beings under emotional pressure, swept along by subtle vices—fear, deference, denial, avoidance, ego sensitivity. Each distortion was small. Together they made catastrophe inevitable.
Most systems do not crash into icy rivers; they drift, little by little, until the drift becomes distance. And always, misalignment destroys foresight long before it destroys anything else. Every inflection point begins with weak signals. Every future arrives with early warnings. But leaders, teams and organizations who are internally misaligned cannot adequately perceive them.
You cannot anticipate what you refuse to perceive. Let me repeat this point, “You cannot anticipate what you refuse to perceive.” Weak signals register only in systems that are aligned enough—internally clear enough—to let discomfort become information that is acted upon.
Flight 90 was surrounded by signals: ice on the wings, abnormal power readings, sluggish acceleration, warnings from other pilots. But misalignment muffled those cues until they were no longer signals—only noise.
When leaders and organizations lose alignment, they lose their future.
