In the first quarter of 2021, Line-of-SightSM surveyed hundreds of CEOs across the United States, representing a range of industries. The goal was to understand how business leaders were executing their strategies as they eased their companies into the aftermath of one of the most severe economic disruptions in recent history.

After reading this report, you will understand what great execution looks like. You will appreciate how a company’s growth and size impact CEOs’ ability to improve execution, how different strategies demand different operational models, and how much execution excellence can positively impact business performance in the post-pandemic.

• Sixty-five percent of organizations have an agreed upon strategy.
• Just fourteen percent understand the organization’s strategy.
• Less than ten percent of all organizations successfully execute their strategy.

Every company should be concerned about business strategy, but with such bleak historical gains one wonders if it’s even worth the effort.  Actually, it’s worth your best effort! There is an often-missing component that, if consistently applied, will dramatically enhance the progression of strategy creation, communication and execution. That critical element is alignment!

The results are organized into the categories of reliability or validity they represent. These include the following: 

1. Reliability
2. Construct Validity
3. Criterion-Related Validity
4. Confidence-Based Marking Scale

All analyses described in this report were conducted using the software program SmartPLS, with the exception of multicollinearity, which was assessed using SPSS.

After collecting data from hundreds of employees across multiple industries and job levels with the Line-of-Sight^SM assessment (LOS), it became abundantly clear that there is a strong need for increased alignment in organizations. The Validity Overview concludes the Line-of-Sight^SM assessment provides an accurate and precise measure of the organization’s current alignment across five specific keys to strategy execution (KSE’s):

1. Strategic Understanding
2. Leadership
3. Balanced Metrics
4. Activities and Structure
5. Human Capital

While measuring PR and communications from an external perspective is generally the priority of PR executives, it’s just as important for them to measure the success of internal communications. The reasoning for this isn't because you need a headcount for this summer's BBQ, but rather because your employees are your most dedicated brand champions.

Originally posted on Havard Business Review, the authors looked at data from the period right before the 2008 recession addressing how 5,278 publicly-traded firms fared based on their generic strategy of being either pure differentiators or pure cost leaders, according to Michael Porter’s theories. In their analysis, differentiators were significantly more likely to suffer reduced revenues than cost leaders in the Great Recession and were significantly more likely to go out of business. Is it wise then to change strategies by moving toward cost leadership during a recession? After all, moving from differentiation toward cost leadership makes a certain sense; everyone tightens their belts in a recession, particularly a severe one. But the authors didn’t find evidence to support this. Instead they found that changing strategy did not increase firm chances of surviving the recession, nor did it improve the firm’s revenues or its finances.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• The question of the year: Are remote teams productive?
• Inquisitive managers can get to the root of team productivity
• Ask the right questions to set your remote teams up for success

Gallup Report