In my experience, five such topics control the train: organizational structure and hierarchy, financial results, the leader's scenes of his or her job, time management, and corporate culture. Messages on these subjects wield extraordinary influence within the firm. When leaders take it for granted that everyone in the organization shares their assumptions or knows their mental models regarding the five subject areas, they lose their grip on the managerial levers and soon have the proverbial runaway train on their hands. But properly defined, disseminated, and controlled, the five topics afford the leader opportunities for organizational alignment increased accountability, and substantially better performance.