MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Strategic Alignment With AI and Smart KPIs

Aligning operations with strategy is a critical leadership task. Turbulent market conditions, agile competitors, and ongoing demands to digitally upgrade operations and processes make strategic alignment more challenging to manage. Digitally savvy leaders are addressing the alignment challenge by improving how they use and develop KPIs.

Drawing on a global survey of more than 3,000 managers and 17 executive interviews, we find leaders across the business spectrum using AI to enhance how KPIs are prioritized, organized, and shared. These enhancements have a direct, measurable effect on strengthening strategic alignment. These leaders also deploy AI to improve the accuracy, detail, and predictive capabilities of KPIs themselves. The improvements individually and collectively generate greater situational awareness and improve how corporate functions work together to achieve strategic outcomes.

About the Author

David Kiron is the editorial director, research, of MIT Sloan Management Review and program lead for its Big Ideas research initiatives.

Michael Schrage is a research fellow with the MIT Sloan School of Management’s Initiative on the Digital Economy. His research, writing, and advisory work focuses on the behavioral economics of digital media, models, and metrics as strategic resources for managing innovation opportunity and risk.

François Candelon is a senior partner and managing director at Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and the global director of the BCG Henderson Institute, where his research focuses on the impact of technologies on business and society. He can be contacted at candelon.francois@bcg.com.

Shervin Khodabandeh is a senior partner and managing director at BCG and the coleader of BCG’s AI business in North America. He is a leader in BCG X and has over 20 years of experience driving business impact from AI and digital. He can be contacted at shervin@bcg.com.

Michael Chu is a partner and associate director at BCG, where he focuses on applying AI and machine learning to business problems in commercial functions, including optimizing pricing, promotions, sales, and marketing. He can be reached at chu.michael@bcg.com.

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