Is Your Company as Strategically Aligned as You Think It Is?

Building strategic alignment across an organization is always challenging, but a large gap between actual and perceived alignment makes it that much harder to get on the same page and implement a strategy effectively. In this piece, the authors share insights from a recent analysis of more than 500 employees, which found that actual strategic alignment among employees, managers, and executives was two to three times lower than perceived alignment. In other words, in many organizations, people think that everyone is aligned on what the strategy is, but in reality, different people have widely different understandings. To bridge this gap and foster true strategic alignment, the authors suggest that leaders must focus their strategies on driving customer value; weave those strategies into everyone’s daily work; and develop strategic priorities not in a vacuum, but through collaborative dialogue with senior executives, middle managers, and frontline employees.