Strategic Alignment Assessment
A clear read of how far your strategy travels - from the top team's picture of it to what the middle and the edge can actually act on.
Our strategic alignment assessment tells you how far your strategy actually travels - from the picture in the top team's heads to the work people do on a Tuesday. We look at six things: whether leaders share one strategy, whether intent survives the cascade, where money and attention really go, whether the operating model fits the direction, whether the reinforcement systems pull the same way, and whether functions row together or optimise their own patch. Then we give you the divergence that matters most - where line of sight holds, where it breaks, and what to close first.
The strategy-execution gap is almost always a conditions problem, not a communication one. You can cascade objectives perfectly and still find people understand the strategy but cannot act on it. That gap is what an alignment read makes visible.
95% of employees do not understand their organisation's strategy (Kaplan & Norton, Harvard Business Review). If the strategy does not survive the trip from the boardroom to the work, alignment is the thing to read - not the plan itself.
When a strategic alignment assessment helps
An alignment read earns its place when the strategy is sound on paper but keeps failing to show up in the work:
The situation | How it helps |
|---|---|
The strategy is agreed, but nothing moves | Reads where line of sight breaks between intent and daily work, so you close the real break, not a guess. |
Everyone nods, then does something different | Tests directional consensus in the top team, so you see whether one strategy is actually shared or six versions are. |
Effort is high and impact is low | Follows where money, time and attention really flow, so you see the priorities the org is funding versus the ones it declared. |
Functions are each winning their own game | Separates horizontal from vertical alignment, so you see whether functions row together or optimise their silo. |
A new strategy has just landed | Reads whether the operating model, incentives and decision rights can carry it, before the cascade starts. |
You're new in post | Gives you a fair read of how aligned the org already is, top to bottom, before you commit to a direction. |
What we look at
We start from your stated strategy - the direction, the priorities, the choices already made. That is the reference point. We then read how fully it shows up across the levels, through six angles - the line of sight from a strategy in the boardroom to work at the edge:
Directional consensus
Whether the top team genuinely shares one picture of the strategy, or holds several that only sound alike. Consensus at the top is the cheapest alignment there is - a day in a room versus a year of mixed signals below.
We ask each member of the top team, separately, what the strategy means in practice: what wins, what waits, what's off the table. The differences that surface are usually specific and resolvable - far easier named in a workshop than discovered in next year's budget round.
The strategy-to-work cascade
Whether intent survives each level down, so people can name what the strategy asks of their own work. Every level translates the strategy for the next, and each translation can sharpen it or soften it.
We sample the strategy at each level: what a director, a manager and a frontline colleague each say it asks of them. Read together, the levels show exactly where the meaning changes - so the fix is one conversation per level, not another all-staff cascade.
Resource and priority coherence
Whether money, time and attention actually flow to the stated priorities, or to the old ones. Budgets have momentum - last year's allocations quietly renew themselves unless the strategy actively intervenes.
We read the evidence trails: budget lines, headcount moves, what the executive calendar actually contains. Set against the stated priorities, they show where the strategy is already funded - and where it's still a statement waiting for its resources.
Operating-model fit
Whether the structure, processes and decision rights are built to deliver this strategy, or a previous one. Operating models are always built for some strategy - the question is which.
We test the model against this strategy's specific demands: the collaborations it needs, the speed it assumes, the decisions it moves. Misfit shows up first as everyday friction - the assessment traces that friction back to the model, where it can actually be fixed.
Reinforcement systems
Whether the incentives, metrics and rituals reward the strategy, or quietly pull against it. They're also the most mechanical part of alignment - once re-pointed, they work for the strategy around the clock.
We inventory what's actually measured, incentivised and celebrated, and test each against the strategy's priorities. Most misalignment here is inherited rather than chosen - which makes the fix list unusually uncontroversial once written down.
Horizontal alignment
Whether functions row together toward the shared direction, or each optimise their own patch. It's the alignment nobody owns, because it lives between the org chart's lines rather than inside them.
We look at the cross-functional work the strategy depends on - shared initiatives, joint targets, sequencing between functions - and check the plans against each other. Collisions and gaps surface now, in the assessment, rather than mid-year when they're expensive.
The six angles stay constant; how we read them, we shape around you - your strategy, structure, operating model, levels and functions - so the picture fits your organisation, not a template.
Why these six angles
These six are where a sound strategy tends to come apart on the way to the work. Together they hold apart the two kinds of alignment that get confused. Vertical alignment is line of sight top to bottom: directional consensus in the top team, a cascade that survives each level, and reinforcement systems that reward the direction rather than fight it. Horizontal alignment is functions rowing together across the org, rather than each optimising its own patch. An organisation can be strong on one and weak on the other, and the fix is different for each.
Resource and priority coherence and operating-model fit are the conditions test. A strategy is only as real as what gets funded and who gets to decide. Where the money, the calendar and the decision rights still serve the old direction, people can understand the new strategy perfectly and still be unable to act on it - which is why the gap is a conditions problem, not a communication one.
These angles are our lens, refined across many organisations. They read the strategy as it is lived across the levels - what the org actually funds, rewards and decides - not the strategy as it reads on the page.
How it works
We read alignment the way it actually plays out across the levels - through more than one lens, so the divergence holds up:
- We measure it - a short alignment pulse across the levels, tracing line of sight from the top team to the edge. We show you where the read diverges - leadership versus the middle versus the front line - not just the average. The divergence is usually where the story is.
- We listen - interviews across a cross-section from board to frontline. We work from real, recent decisions: what got funded, what got shelved, and how that squares with the stated strategy.
- We watch, where it helps - time spent in real decision and priority-setting moments, seeing where resource and attention actually go when a trade-off has to be made.
- We make sense of it - we build a line-of-sight map, an alignment matrix and a resource-flow read, and bring you the divergence between how aligned leaders believe the org is and how aligned it reads from the middle and the edge.
The thinking behind the method
No single method captures alignment on its own, so we use several and cross-check them. The pulse shows you where line of sight breaks, but not why - and an average hides how differently the top team and the front line can read the same strategy. Interviews reach the why, but only from the people in the room. Watching real decisions shows you where resource and attention actually go, rather than where people say they go. Used together, they triangulate: a divergence has to show up in more than one before we treat it as real.
The signature move is to read alignment from three heights and set them side by side. Leaders routinely over-estimate how aligned the organisation is, because the strategy is clearest at the level it was written. The middle and the edge are where it has to be acted on, and where line of sight is most likely to have thinned. The gap between how aligned it looks from the top and how it reads further down is usually the most useful thing we find.
We work from real decisions rather than stated intentions. A budget line, a shelved project, a hire made or not made - these tell you what the strategy actually is far better than a plan does. What gets funded and who gets to decide is the strategy, whatever the deck says.
The artefacts do specific jobs. A strategy-to-execution line-of-sight map traces intent down the levels. An alignment matrix reads each condition - structure, operations, incentives, capability, decision rights - against the stated strategy. A resource-flow read follows where money and attention go and names the priority conflicts. And a horizontal-versus-vertical view separates functions rowing together from line of sight top to bottom.
What you get
A working session, not a report filed and forgotten. We walk you through:
- A clear read of your line of sight - how far the strategy travels, level by level.
- Where alignment is strong and worth protecting - not just where it thins.
- The few places line of sight breaks, and whether the break is vertical or horizontal.
- The handful of conditions - funding, decision rights, incentives - that would most close the strategy-execution gap.
Where two things are both true and in tension - "we've told everyone the strategy" and "the incentives still reward the old one" - we show you both. That gap between the said and the funded is usually where the useful conversation starts.
How we hand it back - and what happens next
The assessment ends in a working session, not a document dropped in your inbox. We take you through the line-of-sight map, the alignment matrix and the divergence read in person, so it lands as something you understand and can act on, rather than a report read once and filed.
Some of the most useful findings come as pairs - the strategy people can recite, set against the conditions that stop them acting on it. We name those tensions rather than smoothing them into one tidy message, because the tension is where the strategy is actually leaking.
From there it's your call. Sometimes the map is enough and you close the gaps yourselves. Sometimes you want us alongside for the realignment that follows - a focused piece of work on decision rights, resource flow or the operating model, or a fuller strategic alignment programme. And if what you need turns out to be lighter than you feared, we'll say so.
Focused now, or continuous over time
This is a focused, one-off deep read of your alignment as it stands right now. If what you want is the whole organisation tracked continuously - alignment as one thread among eight - that's States of Vitality, our organisational-health platform. Different job: depth now, versus the wider picture over time.
Common questions
How is this different from a strategy review or an engagement survey?
A strategy review tests whether the plan is right. This tests whether it travels - the line of sight from the top team's intent to what people can act on at the edge. A survey gives you scores; we read more than the numbers - interviews board to frontline, real decisions, and the gap between the strategy stated and the strategy funded - and go deep on alignment specifically.
Who do you involve?
A cross-section from board to frontline - the pulse reaches every level, and we interview across functions, levels and tenure. Leaders are often the least able to see where line of sight breaks below them, so the read from the middle and the edge, and the gaps between those groups, are where the value is.
Isn't this something the board already knows?
Boards know the strategy - they wrote it. What they rarely see is how far it survives the cascade. Leaders routinely over-estimate how aligned the organisation is, because the strategy is clearest where it was written. We read how it looks from the middle and the edge, where the strategy actually has to be acted on, and the gap between those views is usually the finding.
How long does it take?
It's usually weeks rather than months, but it depends on the size of your organisation and how many levels and functions the strategy has to travel through. We build each assessment around you, and agree the timeline when we scope it.
How much does it cost?
There's no standard price - we build each assessment around you, so the cost reflects the size of your organisation, the scope, and the depth you need. We scope it with you and give you a clear figure before you commit.
Is it confidential?
Yes. Pulse responses are anonymous, interviews are confidential, and we report in groups and patterns - by level and function - never in a way that identifies an individual.
Strategy should be the golden thread running through every decision, every team, every day. We help you create the conditions where that happens - so strategy is felt everywhere, not filed somewhere.
Strategy execution design gives you your strategy execution system: the working architecture that turns your strategy into what every team does. It sets the line of sight from strategy to team-level objectives, the decision rights and guardrails, the cross-unit commitments and the operating rhythm - written down and wired into how you run. We design it with your leaders, so the result is genuinely theirs.
The Strategy Deployment Programme takes your Strategy Execution Design and deploys it across the organisation: the breakthrough objectives cascaded to every level, the budgets and operations pointed at the priorities, the strategic-initiative portfolio delivered, and a strategy-review rhythm keeping it all moving. By the end the strategy is the way the organisation runs, not a document, and your leaders are running that machinery themselves.
Staying on Strategy keeps your deployed strategy fit and improving, run by your own leaders and teams. You test the strategy against results on a regular rhythm, re-align priorities as conditions change, and reallocate funds and attention onto what matters now. We build that rhythm into your people so they run it themselves, and you can keep us on a lighter ongoing cadence as an outside pair of eyes if you want one.
The McKinsey 7-S Model is a strategic framework that maps seven interconnected elements of an organisation - from strategy and structure to skills and shared values. It helps leaders understand how changing one part of the organisation affects everything else.
The Mendelow Power-Interest Matrix is a stakeholder mapping tool that helps you work out who matters most during a change or project. It plots stakeholders by their level of power and interest so you can plan how to engage each group.
A PESTLE Analysis is a framework for scanning the external environment across six areas - Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Legal, and Environmental. It helps organisations understand the bigger forces that could affect their strategy and planning.
The strategy is clear. So why does the organisation keep doing something different? The answer usually isn't about communication or buy-in. It's about the conditions nobody designed for.
Why futures thinking needs to become an everyday organisational capability rather than an occasional planning exercise. This article explores how developing future literacy helps organisations navigate uncertainty with confidence.
Thinking about a strategic alignment assessment?
Tell us what's prompting it and what you want to understand, and we'll say whether it's the right move.