Align People with Strategy: 3 Research-Backed Steps

Align People with Strategy
A well-defined strategy is only as effective as the people who execute it. When employees truly understand and embrace your business strategy, organizations perform at their peak. Our research on organizational alignment shows that the ability to align people with strategy accounts for 60% of the performance gap between high- and low-performing organizations, influencing outcomes such as:

• Revenue growth
• Profitability
• Customer loyalty
• Leadership effectiveness
• Employee engagement

Unclear Strategies Create Confusion and Disengagement
Our corporate culture assessment data reveals a striking reality: nearly 70% of employees say their company’s strategy is either unknown or unclear. If your people — from executives to frontline staff — cannot clearly articulate:

• why your business exists
• what sets your offerings apart
• where the organization is headed

strategic clarity is missing. Without it, decisions become inconsistent, priorities get muddled, and employee engagement suffers.

The Consequences of a Misunderstood or Misaligned Strategy Are Real
A lack of a clear business strategy directly affects:

• Business Actions
  Leadership simulation assessment data shows that a clear corporate strategy shapes how everyone prioritizes their time and effort. Without a widely understood strategy and a shared plan for action, progress slows, and energy is wasted. When employees don’t see how their work connects to overarching business goals, they often end up working at cross purposes.

  In organizations with strong strategic alignment, every action is purposeful and drives toward common objectives. Conversely, teams experiencing low engagement or operating in fragmented silos often signal a strategy that is either unclear, misunderstood, or not trusted.

• Business Decisions
  Without clear strategic priorities, even well-intentioned decisions can steer the company off course. For example, if your strategy focuses on rapid growth, allocating resources to tighten cost controls may be less effective than investing in sales, talent acquisition, employee onboarding, or scaling internal systems — actions that directly support the company’s expansion goals.

3 Research-Backed Steps to Align People with Strategy

To outpace your competitors, aligning your people with strategy is essential. Research shows that when employees understand and embrace strategic priorities, organizations achieve higher performance. Here are three evidence-based strategies to ensure your team is moving cohesively toward your company’s goals:

1. Be Crystal Clear
   The first step for any leader is ensuring that the leadership team itself has absolute clarity on the strategy for success. Dedicate the time and effort to define what drives your business, who your target clients are, your unique value proposition, key strategic initiatives, measurable success metrics, and the initial actions that will set the plan in motion.

   Without this clarity, strategy execution is little more than wishful thinking.

   You’ll know your strategy is sufficiently clear when the majority of employees can articulate it, actively implement it, and see its relevance. Until that point, you have work to do if you want your organization to perform at full potential.

2. Communicate and Cascade the Strategy
   Share your vision and the few critical strategic moves that will drive its success. Ensure employees aren’t just nodding in agreement — they should be able to apply the strategy to guide real decisions that advance the business. To strengthen execution, involve every organizational level in the strategy design process whenever possible. At a minimum, solicit feedback on non-critical areas and engage teams in defining how their work directly contributes to the broader goals.

   The more you empower people to make the strategy their own, the stronger their commitment will be. Don’t hesitate to “go slow to go fast” during strategy design and involvement — investing the time upfront will pay dividends in execution and results.

3. Encourage, Measure, and Reward Strategic Adoption
   Recognize employees promptly and meaningfully when they take actions that align with your strategy and culture. Equally important, address instances where strategy or cultural expectations are ignored — ensure consequences are fair, proportionate, and timely.

   A well-designed performance management system guides employees toward the right behaviors while discouraging misaligned actions. Keep your teams informed about strategic progress, and focus on inspiring them to contribute toward the goals that matter most — together.

The Bottom Line
A strategy only succeeds when it flows through your people. Without alignment, even the best plans lose momentum and impact. Ask yourself: do your employees truly understand, believe in, and commit to the strategies that will drive your organization forward?

To see if your strategy is clear enough for success, download 7 Proven Ways to Stress Test Your Strategy

by Tristam Brown: CEO

Tristam Brown is an executive business consultant and organizational development expert with more than three decades of experience helping organizations accelerate performance, build high-impact teams, and turn strategy into execution. As CEO of LSA Global, he works with leaders to get and stay aligned™ through research-backed strategy, culture, and talent solutions that produce measurable, business-critical results. See full bio.