In this episode, I sit down with Sebastian Varela to dig into one of the trickiest parts of project design: alignment. Not the "check the box and move on" kind. The kind where you're trying to balance clear communication across stakeholders with the flexibility teams need to actually get things done on the ground.

Sebastian is the Director of Strategy and Institutional Alignment for the Cities Program at the World Resources Institute (WRI), a global think-do-tank focused on environmental work. His team tackles big issues affecting urban centers around the world — public transportation, climate resilience, public spaces, etc., which means a lot of different stakeholders with a lot of different ideas on how to get things done. The best way I can describe what Sebastian does? We once gave him a poster of himself herding cats up a mountain. He  ...