MIT Sloan Management Review Article on No One Knows Your Strategy - Not Even Your Top Leaders

New research reveals the surprising reasons managers don’t know their company’s strategy.

The CEO of a large technology company (let’s call it Generex) recently reviewed the results of her company’s annual employee engagement survey and was delighted that strategic alignment emerged as an area of strength.1 Among the senior leaders surveyed, 97% said they had a clear understanding of the company’s priorities and how their work contributed to corporate objectives. Based on these scores, the CEO was confident that the company’s five strategic priorities — which had not changed over the past two years and which she communicated regularly — were well understood by the leaders responsible for executing them.

We then asked those same managers to list the company’s strategic priorities. Using a machine-learning algorithm and human coders, we classified their answers to assess how well their responses aligned with the official strategic priorities.2 The CEO was shocked at the results. Only one-quarter of the managers surveyed could list three of the company’s five strategic priorities. Even worse, one-third of the leaders charged with implementing the company’s strategy could not list even one.

About the Author

Donald Sull, who tweets @simple_rules, is a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Charles Sull is a partner and James Yoder is the former chief data scientist at Charles Thames Strategy Partners LLC.

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