The Secret to Workforce Alignment

Why do teams looking at the same operation see completely different things? A medieval parable explains it better than most modern management frameworks.

The story goes like this.

Three stonecutters are asked what they are doing.

The first says he is cutting stone.
The second says he is earning a living.
The third says he is building a cathedral.

All three answers are true. But only one reflects the full system.

This parable endures because it captures something fundamental about how people experience work. The same effort can be understood as a task, a transaction, or a contribution to something larger. The difference is perspective, which is where workforce alignment so often breaks down.

The Contact Center Cathedral

That same dynamic plays out every day in contact centers.

An agent sees a schedule. Shifts, breaks, swaps, predictability and fairness. A supervisor sees coverage. Attendance, escalations, coaching windows and getting through the next few hours.
Workforce management sees a capacity plan. Forecast accuracy, interval demand, shrinkage and longer-term balance.

Same operation. Different lenses.

Misalignment begins when each group assumes its perspective is the operation.

Agents find schedules arbitrary, while supervisors feel disconnected from unrealistic planning. Workforce teams see optimized plans overridden, leading leadership to blame execution for poor outcomes.

In most cases, it is not. Each group is responding rationally to the same environment with different information, constraints, and time horizons. The issue is incomplete context.

What We Are Building

In the parable, the shift happens when the stonecutter understands the cathedral.

So, what is the cathedral in a contact center?

It is not service level alone.
It is not adherence alone.
It is not cost control in isolation.

This operating system must balance stable service and labor stewardship with fair scheduling. It creates a manageable rhythm for leaders and a consistent customer experience, fostering an environment where employees excel without burning out.

When teams can see that structure clearly, alignment stops being enforced and starts becoming intuitive. This connection between shared purpose and performance has been explored by Harvard Business Review, particularly in how purpose shapes daily decisions.

Every forecast, every schedule decision and every variance conversation either strengthens or weakens the structure being built.

The Cost of Losing the Cathedral

When people cannot see how their work connects to a larger system, disengagement follows.

It often appears first as friction. Then, attrition. Then, chronic instability.

Contact center turnover is an operational failure, not a talent one. Constant retraining and lost knowledge erode resilience in a misalignment that McKinsey & Company notes drives up both cost and complexity.

This erosion rarely happens all at once. It compounds quietly. A confusing schedule change. A coaching session approved at the wrong time. A missed interval without explanation. Over time, trust declines and decisions feel adversarial rather than collaborative.

Making the Cathedral Visible

Alignment does not come from better dashboards alone. It comes from shared understanding.

Regular, structured conversations where demand, staffing and operational reality are discussed in the same language are necessary. These sessions surface why different decisions make sense from different vantage points.

Schedule transparency matters. When agents understand why a start time exists or how a pattern protects coverage, schedules stop feeling arbitrary. Trust improves. Exceptions decrease.

Cause-and-effect visibility matters. A five-minute variance feels insignificant until its impact across intervals, queues and service levels is clear. When supervisors understand system sensitivity, decisions change. When workforce teams understand floor friction, models improve.

Clear escalation paths matter because people need to understand how decisions are made. When the process is opaque, teams invent workarounds just to keep work moving. When ownership and communication are explicit, collaboration feels safer and the system feels less arbitrary.

Leaders play a decisive role here. Research summarized by Gallup shows that managers account for most of the variance in team engagement, making this a core leadership responsibility.

From Cutting Stone to Building Together

The lesson of the parable is not that one perspective is superior. It is that perspective shapes behavior.

The stonecutter who saw the cathedral approached the work differently because the work meant something different.

Shared understanding transforms the culture. Workforce planning becomes transparent, supervisors escape conflicting pressures, and agents begin experiencing schedules as a partnership rather than a mandate.

Small decisions still matter. Individual intervals still matter. Personal preferences still matter.

But they matter most when everyone can see the cathedral.

That is when alignment stops being enforced and starts being built.