Strategic Alignment: 3 Main Steps to Get Leaders Aligned

What is Strategic Alignment?
Strategic alignment is the point at which an organization’s resources, investments, decisions, and actions operate in concert to advance its corporate priorities — delivering outcomes that resonate with both the business and its people. At its core, alignment is about leaders fostering synergy, sustaining long-term organizational health, and driving higher performance.

True strategic alignment happens when every part of the organization is not just executing tasks, but actively translating the intentions behind the strategy into meaningful outcomes for leaders, teams, and customers alike. It ensures that the strategy is understood, embraced, and enacted consistently across the enterprise.

What Difference Does Alignment Make?
Our organizational alignment research spanned eight industries, over 400 companies, the insights of academic experts, and over three decades worth of hands-on experience. What we found was that highly aligned companies not only grow revenue 58% faster and are 72% more profitable, but they also outperform unaligned organizations at these rates:

• Customer Retention 2.23-to-1
• Customer Satisfaction 3.2-to-1
• Leadership Effectiveness 8.71-to-1
• Employee Engagement 16.8-to-1

Clearly, strategic alignment matters.

So, How Do You Achieve Strategic Alignment?

We simplify the journey to strategic alignment into three essential steps:

1. Get Leaders Aligned On Strategic Priorities
   No matter your plan for success, it must be understood, credible, and actionable for all key stakeholders — starting with the leadership team. Why? Because strategies succeed only when leaders provide unwavering focus, deep commitment, and the resources managers and employees need to execute in a way that makes sense.
   
   Alignment at the top is critical. Only when the leadership team is fully on the same page can you secure buy-in across the organization, shape the right behaviors, and track the metrics that ensure the strategy stays on course.
   
   You’ll know you’re on the right path when your leaders can clearly articulate the strategy, trust that it is implementable within your unique culture and marketplace, and genuinely believe it can succeed.
   
   
2. Actively Involve Key Stakeholders
   Aligning leaders at the top through an executive strategy retreat is only the first step — execution depends on active engagement. Research from Bain and decades of experience confirm that stakeholder involvement during strategy design is the strongest predictor of success — far more than strategy communication campaigns.
   
   While executives set overarching priorities, teams must design and own their plans within that framework. Open discussion and rigorous debate ensure every function and team understands how their work connects to the broader strategy and trusts it is actionable and achievable.
   
   You’ll know you’re on the right path when every employee can answer three questions: What is important? Why does it matter? How does my role directly contribute to success? When those answers are clear, strategy moves from a plan on paper to results in the field.
   
   
3. Reinforce What Matters Most
   Once the WHAT and the HOW are clear, change management consulting experts know the real work begins — embedding strategy into everyday behavior.  It starts with assessing corporate culture, fostering transparency, and establishing accountability at every leadership level. Leaders must make plans, progress, and challenges visible, while encouraging open discussions and constructive debate.
   
   Transparency and accountability empower employees to take ownership and make strategic decisions within their scope. Leaders then must consistently model, recognize, and reinforce the attitudes and behaviors that drive the strategy forward.
   
   You’ll know you’re on track when behaviors, success metrics, and reward systems actively support — rather than block — consistent strategy execution across the organization.

The Bottom Line
Are you fully mobilizing your workforce to move in the same strategic direction? If not, the time to align is now — because strategy succeeds only when everyone is pulling together.

To learn more about getting aligned, download Organizational Alignment for Leaders – The Key Ingredient for Higher Performance

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.