Look for
Mutual constraint
Does changing one component alter what other components can or should do?
One way alignment happens
Coupling
What changes when the parts become mutually informative and mutually constraining?
Sometimes alignment does not come from putting the same goal inside every component. It comes from arranging relationships so that what one part does changes the conditions faced by another.
Try seeing it
The relationship can do work that the parts cannot do alone.
Two muscles pulling in opposing directions can stabilize a limb. Cells can coordinate through signals that make organism-scale conditions locally actionable. Buyers and sellers alter prices, which in turn alter later choices.
In each case, the relevant alignment is difficult to locate inside any component by itself. It exists partly in the dependencies among them.
Look for
Information in interaction
Does the relationship itself make larger conditions available to local action?
Watch out for
Bad coupling
More coupling is not automatically better. It can create rigidity, runaway synchronization, or coordination around the wrong variable.
A useful perturbation
Remove the connection. Does the alignment survive?
If not, the coupling was probably doing part of the coordinative work.