Is Your Company as Strategically Aligned as You Think It Is?
Actual strategic alignment inside firms is two to three times lower than people believe, so leaders should measure rather than assume it.
Summary
Mittal, Piazza and Malshe surveyed more than 500 frontline employees, middle managers and senior executives across 12 organizations. Participants believed strategic agreement in their firms was around 82%. But analysis of their written explanations of strategy, measured by overlap in concepts and words, showed actual alignment was two to three times lower. The authors argue that such misalignment is both common and harmful, and that leaders
Editor's opinion
A genuine methodological contribution: measuring actual vs. perceived strategic alignment shows it's 2-3x lower than believed -- surprising and directly actionable.
Key concepts
Strategic alignment gap · Perceived versus actual alignment · Linguistic analysis