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A well-established, medium-sized trucking company with over 2,000 drivers had grown consistently over the past 20 years by establishing long-term relationships based on custom solutions for their customers. Budgets reflected their client intimacy go-to-market strategy; the CEO himself maintained well-established, long-term relationships with their largest customers. This strategy and market reputation always got them the last look in competitive bids with existing customers and new prospects.
When Line-of-SightSM was called, the CEO acknowledged that they had progressively lost that competitive edge in the last four years; they stopped being the partner of choice for their current customers, and equally concerning, they were not even getting invited to the table for new requests for proposals. The top line was flattening and increasing distrust in the leadership was pushing drivers to leave the organization in record numbers; their reputation as one of the best places to work in the industry was eroding, increasingly replaced by the perception of being a place that was hard on their employees. The CEO engaged with Line-of-SightSM to do an initial organizational health scan on the company.





The analytics showed strengths in organizational structure and good visibility into the performance KPI’s used to run the company. The root causes of the company’s troubles were traced to vulnerabilities surrounding the company’s strategic intent, human capital, and leadership. In other words, the company had lost its former focus and the tight execution discipline that undergirded their relationship-based differentiation. Using the data, focus was placed on these critical areas and action plans were put into place for improvement over the next 6-12 months.
To address the strategic intent vulnerability, the executive team went back to having quarterly offsite planning sessions, a ritual that had served them well in their growth years but had been progressively abandoned. In their first session, they dusted off and updated the companies’ vision, mission and strategic intent and developed a crystal-clear message as to “why people buy from us vs. the competition.” Armed with this focused message, the CEO held a series of Townhall meetings with all employees to deliver this simple, yet powerful message. The message was continually reinforced through the company’s formal communication channels and all company meeting agendas started with a reminder of “why people buy from us vs. the competition.” They added a well-known psychometric assessment to help gain insights on their drivers in order to improve retention and developed a formal leadership training program for all frontline managers and above.





With these specific action plans in place, visibility into progress was measured on a monthly basis to stay on track, adjust and fine-tune as part of the process.
Over the next 18 months, the company saw a 27% improvement in driver turnover and topline revenue, previously taxed by unfocused execution, grew by 9%.
Leadership credibility improved by 39%; their new leadership development programs produced more high-potentials than anticipated; as a result, most open management positions were filled from within, which in turn reinforced the team’s alignment and cohesion around their differentiation strategy and execution.




Organizational Health Scan: 61%
Strategic Understanding: 31%
Human Capital: 28%
Activities & Structure: 39%




Organizational Health Scan: 86%
Strategic Understanding: 89%
Human Capital: 75%
Activities & Structure: 78%





Line-of-SightSM measures the Health Index of an organization in 5 critical execution capabilities:
Strategic Understanding, Leadership, Balanced Metrics, Activities & Structure, and Human Capital. Measurements are taken at all levels of the organization to deliver objective, bias-free analytics.
A score of 75% and above in each of these areas indicates strong execution capabilities
A score between 50% and 75% indicates vulnerabilities, i.e. strategy is not executed as expected by the leadership team.
A score inferior to 50% indicates a serious gap that threatens the integrity of the organization’s market positioning and strategy.
The overall Organizational Health Scan is a composite snapshot of the organization’s execution prowess. Organizational health is a leadership mindset that applies data and discipline to build execution excellence.



Interested In Evaluating and Improving your Execution?
Contact Us!

And sign up to receive our monthly newsletter with tips and updates by 

A well-established, medium-sized trucking company with over 2,000 drivers had grown consistently over the past 20 years by establishing long-term relationships based on custom solutions for their customers. Budgets reflected their client intimacy go-to-market strategy; the CEO himself maintained well-established, long-term relationships with their largest customers. This strategy and market reputation always got them the last look in competitive bids with existing customers and new prospects.
When Line-of-SightSM was called, the CEO acknowledged that they had progressively lost that competitive edge in the last four years; they stopped being the partner of choice for their current customers, and equally concerning, they were not even getting invited to the table for new requests for proposals. The top line was flattening and increasing distrust in the leadership was pushing drivers to leave the organization in record numbers; their reputation as one of the best places to work in the industry was eroding, increasingly replaced by the perception of being a place that was hard on their employees. The CEO engaged with Line-of-SightSM to do an initial organizational health scan on the company.

Case Study: Transportation Company  

What You’ll Discover About Self-Aware Leadership

During the interview, Robert challenged the assumption that being "self-aware" simply means understanding your intentions. He explored deeper questions: Are you aware of everything required to execute your strategy effectively? Do you have the right tools and insights to keep your organization aligned and performing at its best? Listeners will learn:

The missing piece in self-aware leadership

How self-aware leadership encourages leaders to work “on” the business rather than just “in” it

The essential role self-awareness plays in aligning strategy and driving execution

Practical insights for using employee surveys as a tool to gain awareness and enhance strategy

Robert brings over twenty years of experience in helping small and medium-sized businesses scale and thrive through effective leadership and strategy. As the author of 

, Robert shares practical tools and personal stories to help leaders unlock their potential and align their teams for success. Fun fact: Robert is also a classically trained chef, which has equipped him with a unique perspective on delivering excellence under pressure—something he brings to his work with clients.

How Self-Aware Leadership Drives Strategic Success

 resonates with today’s leaders who are navigating complex business environments. He emphasizes that self-aware leadership is not just a soft skill; it's a strategic necessity. By understanding where alignment is lacking, leaders can place resources where they’re needed most, enabling smooth and flawless execution.

Robert’s episode on Business Confidential Now

 and gain actionable insights for your own leadership journey. Whether you’re an executive, manager, or entrepreneur, this episode is packed with valuable takeaways to boost your leadership impact and strategic effectiveness.

Ready to elevate your leadership? Start with this inspiring episode!

Our CEO, Robert Courser, was recently featured as a guest on the 

 podcast. In this insightful episode, Robert dives into the importance of self-aware leadership and its critical role in strategic execution—a topic at the heart of his work and his latest book, 

Line of Sight: The Five Keys for Strategic Execution in an Age of Uncertainty

Discover the Power of Self-Aware Leadership with Robert Courser on Business Confidential Now

This mid-sized enterprise faced challenges common in fast-growing organizations: siloed teams, unclear goals, inconsistent execution, and leadership fatigue. Despite a well-documented strategy, progress was slow. A Line-of-Sight diagnostic revealed the root issue: low organizational health.

With an OHI of 54%, the organization was underperforming across multiple dimensions. But with focus and the right support, change was possible.

Through a structured transformation using the Line-of-Sight platform, the organization adopted a new operating rhythm. Interventions included:

- Executive and team-based alignment workshops.
- Cascading goals and clear performance metrics.
- Coaching to develop strategic leadership habits.
- Continuous measurement through quarterly reviews.

The Results: A High-Performing Organization

-Organizational Health Index increased from 54% to 80%.
-Lowest-scoring domain improved from 43% to 71%.
-Highest-scoring domain improved from 64% to 91%.

Performance gains were not isolated — every dimension improved. Teams became more aligned, focused, and confident in delivering results.

- Strategic alignment became a shared language, not just a top-down directive.
- Leadership cadence evolved, with better communication and more accountability.
- Culture shifted from reactive to proactive, boosting collaboration and innovation.
- Execution became repeatable and scalable, enabling sustained momentum.

1. Start with clarity – Diagnose where your organization truly stands, not just how it feels.
2. Align through action – Move strategy off the whiteboard and into team priorities.
3. Develop leadership habits – Strategic execution starts with behavior.
4. Measure frequently – Track progress quarterly to stay agile and adaptable.
5. Celebrate and scale success – Use internal wins to build momentum.

Organizational health isn’t just a metric — it’s a multiplier. When companies build strong execution muscle and cultural resilience, they create the conditions for sustainable growth.

Want to see what’s possible in your organization?
Let’s explore how Line-of-Sight can help you execute with confidence, clarity, and speed.

Interested in a demo or case study deep dive? Visit: 

How One Company Elevated Its Organizational Health by 26 Points with Line-of-Sight℠

Strategy Is Not the Problem — Execution Is

In today’s fast-paced business world, strategy alone isn’t enough. A great strategy can easily fall flat if the people responsible for executing it don’t understand it — or don’t believe in it. That’s where Line-of-Sight℠ shines.

When an industrial company recently called on Line-of-Sight Implementers to conduct an organizational health scan, they uncovered a familiar but fixable problem: solid strategic thinking was in place, but strategic understanding and leadership communication were falling short.

The Line-of-Sight assessment, using its proprietary Confidence-Based Marking (CBM) methodology, revealed key pain points:

- The Strategic Understanding score was 68%: it suggested high awareness among some employees, but a lack of consistency across teams.
-The Leadership Communication score was 72%: it highlighted measured confidence in leadership’s ability to communicate strategy clearly, but room for improvement.

The bottom-line: employees wanted more clarity. Leaders needed to connect strategy to the frontlines. And the organization needed to transform intention into execution.

What made the difference? Clarity and confidence.

Line-of-Sight℠ helped leaders:
- Translate strategy into team-level language.
- Connect daily activities to organizational goals.
- Make strategy part of everyday decisions.

By measuring not just what employees knew but how confident they were in their knowledge, the organization identified areas where messaging broke down. Leaders then used those insights to reinforce key concepts and build alignment — from the boardroom to the break room.

One of the biggest breakthroughs came from how leaders began to communicate strategy differently:

- The Executive team focused on the “why” — not just the “what”, going over the strategy rationale on multiple occasions.
- They created consistent messaging around the strategy.
- They made strategy part of routine conversations, not just annual planning sessions.

This shift helped transform leadership from simply setting direction to actually building belief and ownership across the organization.

With a clearer strategy and stronger communication:

- Teams began focusing on the right work.
- Individuals made more informed, aligned decisions.
- Employees gained a stronger sense of purpose leading to greater commitment to the company and a 35% reduction in employee turnover.
- Trust in leadership grew significantly, contributing to greater employee engagement and more authentic conversations.

Ultimately, Line-of-Sight helped connect vision with execution, leading to greater agility, focus, and performance.

“70% of CEO failures come not as a result of poor strategy, but of poor execution.” — Fortune


Strategy isn’t just for the C-suite. It belongs to everyone. With Line-of-Sight, organizations transform strategy from a static document into a shared reality — one that’s understood, believed in, and acted on.

Because in the end, execution isn't just about doing — it's about understanding.

Learn how Line-of-Sight can help you drive clarity, confidence, and execution excellence across your organization.

And sign up to receive our monthly newsletter with tips and updates by clicking 

Making Strategy Stick: The Line-of-Sight℠ Advantage

In today’s business world, understanding human capital is key to unlocking an organization’s full potential. Success isn’t just about a solid strategy—it’s about ensuring that the people behind that framework are fully aligned with the company’s objectives.

At Line-of-Sight, we complement behavioral insights by utilizing a cutting-edge, data-driven approach, that offers a holistic evaluation of organizational health from both strategic and talent perspectives. This fosters alignment between people and business goals, driving measurable results.

Psychometrics provides a powerful lens for assessing the performance of individuals, teams, and leadership. But when linked to specific business outcomes, it becomes a game-changer. At Line-of-Sight, we take these assessments further by using information to help organizations identify opportunities they might otherwise miss.

For consultants already using tools like Culture Index, DISC, or Predictive Index, Line-of-Sight offers an innovative edge. We provide real-time analytics that elevate your conversations with the C-suite, reinforcing your position as a trusted advisor with a clear, fact-based view of the organization.

Our platform amplifies the value of performance metrics by offering performance metrics that directly impact organizational goals and operational efficiency. Consultants using Line-of-Sight can give clients a clear understanding of how team behaviors and compositions influence success—and where adjustments are needed.

We also drive accountability and alignment by linking roles, behaviors, and strategic objectives. This guarantees that progress is measurable and sustainable, empowering leadership to make informed decisions that keep the business on track.

At Line-of-Sight, we’re proud to be a resource for consultants who want to lead at the forefront of strategic execution.

Optimizing Human Capital with Line-of-Sight

In today’s business world, understanding human capital is key to unlocking an organization’s full potential. Success isn’t just about a solid strategy—it’s about ensuring that the people behind that strategy are fully aligned with the company’s goals. 

The "One Ford" initiative, launched by CEO Alan Mulally in 2006, remains a powerful example of organizational transformation and strategy execution. Facing severe financial challenges, Ford implemented the "One Ford" strategy to unify global operations, streamline product development, and foster a cohesive corporate culture. This approach restructured regional units into a global functional model, reduced vehicle platforms, and emphasized collaborative behaviors. As a result, Ford achieved a remarkable turnaround, returning to profitability without government bailouts during the financial crisis.

However, Ford's journey exemplifies a broader challenge that organizations face: bridging the gap between strategy and execution. According to Bain & Harvard Business Review, most strategies deliver only 63% of their potential financial performance. This "execution gap" represents an average 37% performance loss—essentially an "execution tax" that organizations unknowingly pay.

Where are these "tax dollars" going? The 37% performance loss breaks down as follows:

7.5%: Inadequate or unavailable resources

4.1%: Actions required to execute not clearly defined

4.1%: Unclear accountabilities for execution

3.7%: Organizational silos and culture blocking execution

2.8%: Inadequate consequences or rewards for success/failure

0.7%: Other obstacles (e.g., inadequate skills or capabilities)

The "One Ford" strategy tackled many of these execution barriers head-on, particularly by eliminating silos, clarifying accountability, and aligning global teams. The results underscore the critical importance of disciplined execution in realizing strategic goals.

For more insights on execution and the "One Ford" approach, Bryce G. Hoffman’s American Icon: Alan Mulally and the Fight to Save Ford Motor Company offers a comprehensive exploration. Organizations can learn from Ford's experience to close the execution gap, eliminate their "execution tax," and fully unlock their strategy's potential.

Profitless Prosperity 

At Line-of-Sight℠, we believe strategic execution doesn’t begin with an annual offsite or quarterly OKR review — it begins on day one. The moment a new employee walks through the door, they should be oriented not just to policies and processes, but to 

. That’s because strategy, to be successful, must be lived and understood at every level of the organization, from leadership to the newest team member.

Too often, orientation is treated as an administrative function — a checklist of tasks to onboard someone. But in today’s environment, where companies move fast and priorities shift quickly, new employees need more than a laptop and login credentials. They need to understand:

 strategic goals and how their role connects to them

 the mission and values that guide decision-making

By anchoring strategy in the new employee orientation, organizations establish a culture of alignment from the start.

Translating strategic intent into operational clarity starts at orientation. It’s where vision becomes actionable, and expectations become shared commitments. Orientation should do more than inform — it should 

Effective orientation empowers new employees by providing:

, so every new hire knows where to direct their focus from day one.

 to connect individual responsibilities to the company’s broader goals and strategic outcomes.

 which enable employees to navigate change, course-correct in real time, and contribute with confidence.

When new team members are equipped with both context and clarity, they accelerate faster, collaborate more effectively, and help move strategy forward — not six months later, but immediately.

Orientation isn’t a warm-up. It’s the first strategic move.

Every new hire represents a fresh opportunity to reinforce the company’s strategy. It’s a chance to turn orientation into activation.

Are your new employees merely onboarded — or are they strategically oriented?

Because in a high-performance organization, 

strategy starts at the new employee orientation.

Strategy Starts at Orientation

The Execution Gap Is Destroying Value - PE Firms Know It

Ask any Private Equity partner what keeps them up at night post-close, and you’ll hear a common theme: execution risk. A shiny investment thesis and an aggressive growth plan mean nothing if the portfolio company can't get out of its own way to deliver. PE firms don’t just need strategy, they need execution muscle. That's why Line-of-Sight is becoming indispensable.

, 70% of CEO failures aren't due to bad strategies, they’re due to poor execution. The Line-of-Sight platform was built to systematically identify and close that gap. It doesn’t rely on platitudes or theoretical frameworks. It delivers hard-edged visibility into organizational execution health—and it does it in weeks, not months.

The Private Equity Playbook Demands Execution Discipline

When PE firms take a controlling stake, they bring capital and conviction—but they also bring urgency. Line-of-Sight meets that urgency with a battle-tested model that reveals execution vulnerabilities at a structural level.

Take the recent Organizational Health scan from a Line-of-Sight client: a mid-market company backed by Private Equity. The company posted a 57% Organizational Health Index. Translation? Massive execution leakage. Here’s where things were falling apart:

 – Little alignment between KPIs and strategy.

 – Limited ability to attract/retain top talent or transfer knowledge.

 – Inconsistent communication of strategy and unclear change leadership.

 – Daily operations misaligned with value creation.

 – Employees know the strategy—but aren’t empowered to act on it.

This is not an isolated case. It’s systemic. PE firms see Line-of-Sight as a heatmap for execution risk—and a playbook for de-risking investment.

Confidence-Based Insight: What Line-of-Sight Does Differently

What separates Line-of-Sight from traditional consulting audits is its 

 (CBM). Instead of merely capturing what people know, it captures how confident they are in their understanding. That delta reveals blind spots—where execution falls apart despite superficial alignment.

CBM is how we cut through the noise and uncover execution barriers that are hiding in plain sight. PE firms are increasingly using Line-of-Sight as part of pre-close diligence, post-close diagnostics, and ongoing board-level reporting. It’s fast, data-driven, and unfiltered.

The Results: From Assessment to Acceleration

Execution health isn’t a KPI, it’s the engine behind every KPI. When portfolio companies use Line-of-Sight, they don’t just get a report. They get a plan of attack:

: Comprehensive, scalable assessments reveal execution pain points.

: Critical, few priorities isolated that will unlock strategic intent.

: Leaders are equipped with targeted interventions to move fast and fix what's broken.

: Monthly Pulse Checks and Quarterly Plan Reviews confirm what's working—and what’s not.

This process builds a culture of execution discipline. That’s what moves multiples.

Line-of-Sight gives operating partners something they crave: clarity. Not in a spreadsheet or a 60-page strategy deck—but in behavioral data from the organization itself. It becomes the 

 for strategy execution. In short, it enables PE firms to:

Ensure execution becomes a capability, not just a hope

In the Private Equity world, time is not a luxury. Execution cannot be left to intuition or inertia. Line-of-Sight makes it measurable. Fixable. Repeatable. And that’s why PE firms don’t just use it, they depend on it.

“Good is the enemy of great.” – Jim Collins

In this automotive parts company, “good” wasn’t the problem — it was the plateau. Leadership wasn’t failing. Strategy wasn’t broken. Teams were engaged. Metrics were in place. But despite all that… something was holding the organization back from achieving greatness.

That something was alignment. Or more accurately, misalignment hiding in plain sight — something only the Line-of-Sight℠ Organizational Health Scan could fully expose.

With an overall Organizational Health Index of 74%, the company scored above average in every key area:
- Strategic Understanding: 75%
- Leadership: 72%
- Balanced Metrics: 69%
- Activities & Structure: 77%
- Human Capital: 73%

On the surface, these numbers tell a feel-good story — a company that’s running well. But Line-of-Sight℠ doesn't just surface averages. It uncovers the confidence behind the numbers — and how much clarity and alignment truly exist behind everyday decision-making.

When “Good” Becomes a Barrier to “Great”

The real challenge? Most of the scores reflected partial alignment. That’s a risk.

- Employees understood the strategy, but not everyone knew how their actions tied back to it.
- Leaders were credible, but not always clear and actionable in their communication.
- Metrics were present, but didn’t always drive the right behaviors.
- Teams were active, but not always focused on the most value-creating work.

In short, the pieces were there — but the connection between them wasn’t tight enough. Without that tight connection, “good” becomes a comfort zone… and the enemy of meaningful transformation.

Line-of-Sight℠ didn’t just highlight what was working — it illuminated where the hidden gaps were:

 Activities & Structure (77%): The strongest score — employees had a sense of how their work contributed to customer value. But there was opportunity to sharpen focus on the “critical few” tasks that truly move the needle.

 Leadership (72%): Credible, but communication could be more consistent and actionable, especially when guiding change.

📊Balanced Metrics (69%): A good foundation of indicators, but the link between budgeting, KPIs, and strategy could be tighter.

Strategic Understanding (75%): Employees had clarity, but confidence varied — especially around competitors and differentiation.

Human Capital (73%): Talent was strong, but knowledge sharing and training could be more strategy-driven, not trend-driven.

Line-of-Sight℠ helped company leaders ask the right questions:

- Are we measuring what really matters?
- Are we communicating strategy so that it sticks?
- Are we using our strategy to make tough trade-offs — not just feel-good decisions?

The result was an immediate roadmap: focus efforts, improve cross-functional clarity, and strengthen the strategic connection between teams, talent, and tasks.

“Good” is the safe zone. It’s where most companies live.
But the cost of staying there is missed opportunity, watered-down impact, and eventually — irrelevance.

Line-of-Sight℠ showed this automotive company that the leap from good to great isn’t about revolution. It’s about alignment, clarity, and execution discipline.

Because in the end, greatness doesn’t come from doing more. It comes from aligning what matters most.

Let Line-of-Sight℠ show you what’s possible when strategy becomes action, and action becomes excellence.

In this automotive parts company, “good” wasn’t the problem — it was the plateau. Leadership wasn’t failing. Strategy wasn’t broken. Teams were engaged. Metrics were in place. But despite all that… something was holding the organization back from achieving greatness.



The Hidden Cost of Being Good Enough

CEOs of high-growth companies rate their performance lowest among their peers

Line-of-SightSM helps mid-market companies and large enterprises execute better by measuring and managing five critical capabilities necessary for successful execution (or KSEs): strategic understanding, leadership, balanced metrics, activities & structure, and human capital; it also assesses market discipline - the ability to execute in a way that remains true to the strategic intent. These factors are aggregated to form an overall Organizational Health index measured on a scale from 0 to 100.

In the first quarter of 2021, Line-of-SightSM conducted research to measure how CEOs evaluate their organizations’ execution performance. In particular, the research compared the CEO ratings for high-growth companies (growing 50% or more year-over-year) against their peers growing at a slower clip.

This data is critical to understand how to lead companies in an unprecedented period of economic recovery: indeed, as the health of the economy improves, we see a concentration of economic activity in specific sectors: for example, spending on recreational goods increased 26% compared to what we could expect if the pandemic had not hit; computers and electronics are higher than normal by 23%; spending on cars and trucks higher by 16%. Therefore, many companies in those sectors are experiencing unusually high growth.

How are their leaders managing such fast growth? Line-of-SightSM research, based on over 100 CEO self-assessments gathered in Q1 2021, shows that high growth is taxing: CEOs experiencing the highest growth (more than 50% year-over-year) gave themselves a score of 63 in the Overall Organizational Health Index compared to an overall average score of 71 for all CEOs.

Their execution self-assessment is lower than their peers across KSEs; the biggest gaps are in Leadership (6 points lower) and Activities and Structure (9 points lower). Both gaps are understandable: high-growth demands greater mindshare from leaders, more issues to solve, more employees to hire, and more efforts to maintain the integrity of culture. In effect, high growth is akin to crisis management, when risk is high, data is scarce, and leaders have to step up.

The gap in Activities and Structure is even less surprising: when growth is fast, employees are challenged to stay focused on priorities; reporting lags behind operations, leaving employees flying blind without accurate or timely data to confirm that they are executing the most critical tasks.

The Line-of-SightSM data highlights another paradox: it is not growth that taxes companies’ execution; it is 

 growth. When comparing execution self-evaluations for high-growth CEOs vs. CEO experiencing moderate growth (between 5% and 50% year-over-year), data show even larger gaps:

● There is a 10-point gap in leadership self-assessment

● There is a 12-point gap in Balanced Metrics

● There is a whopping 13-point gap in Activities and Structure

In fact, CEOs of moderate-growth companies rate their execution 

 than the average across all CEOs; but the gap is highest compared to their high-growth peers.

We may think of moderate growth as a sweet spot for execution, if only one KSE was not lagging for growing companies, and that is Human Capital. CEOs of both high-growth and moderate-growth companies rate their execution lower than average when it comes to managing talent. When you grow, finding the right people to fit the right roles is difficult, as is onboarding then, coaching them, and developing them while the organization scrambles to allocate resources where they have the most impact. In fact, human capital is a challenge for all CEOs, as CEOs on average give themselves the lowest evaluation on this particular execution capability.

The Line-of-SightSM CEO data is a reminder for leaders to be constantly mindful of what it takes to execute well. And this is particularly critical for companies experiencing high growth. Data suggests that high-growth CEOs can improve their execution by:

● Being a self-aware leader, constantly communicating the strategy to keep the organization focused

● Giving employees the right data and reporting to measure their performance and how it ties to the strategy

● Relentlessly helping employees focus on strategic priorities and let go of secondary activities.

Upcoming blogs will focus on other insights from the CEO execution self-assessment data and continue to provide fact-based recommendations to improve execution in the post-pandemic.

The High Growth Curse

Many of our partners have become Line-of-SightSM Certified Partners to help their clients execute better. Line-of-SightSM looks beyond talent to help you assess the 5 Key Success factors for Execution (let’s call them KSEs): Strategic Understanding, Leadership, Balanced Metrics, Activities & Structure, and Human Capital. 

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Despite the amount of change companies have been subject to, and perhaps because of it, Line-of-SightSM data show that our clients have over-indexed on communicating their intent and goals to employees. 

Across a sample of clients from the “pandemic cohort” - clients we started to work with from mid-2020 - we see high scores for Strategic Understanding. Strategic Understanding includes measures such as:

● Individual and collective understanding of the strategy

● Perceived focus of the leadership team on sharing the strategy with employees

● Perceived value of the strategy to guiding employees’ work

● Understanding of the company’s differentiation strategy

Line-of-SightSM measures each Key Success Factor for Execution (KSE) on a scale from 0 to 100. Our clients from the pandemic cohort show Strategic Understanding scores in the mid-70s, and as high as 80 - unusually high scores for an initial organization health scan. For these clients, Strategic Understanding is the highest or second-highest KSE. 

This, of course, is not a guarantee that the market positioning they pursue will be successful. But it means that leaders are communicating and discussing it broadly across their organization.

This in turn means that they create more opportunities for critical discussions, which are likely to lead to refining their positioning into a more robust strategy.

Strategic Understanding is only one aspect of good execution, but so far, we see that our clients have stepped up to broadly share their strategic goals. Their challenge will be to maintain this transparency and clarity as they head into the post-pandemic phase. When the economy improves, there will be a greater risk of focusing on the more tactical aspects of operations and getting the collective eyes of the organization off the strategy ball. There will also be a greater risk of losing focus on a single, clear positioning strategy, as improving financials create more opportunities to add more activities, people, and metrics, in ways that may be less rigorously aligned with the original strategy.

This is why our clients run Line-of-SightSM pulse scans at least every quarter to measure how well they maintain their execution excellence. We expect clients to accelerate this cadence in 2021, as a rapidly improving post-pandemic environment will create many temptations to relax discipline; they will rely on execution data to maintain and amplify the simplicity and focus that ensured their survival in the worst of the crisis. 

To learn more about enhancing your own execution,

please reach out to one of our Certified Partners

and they will initiate an assessment of your execution capabilities.

Despite the amount of change companies have been subject to, and perhaps because of it, Line-of-SightSM data show that our clients have over-indexed on communicating their intent and goals to employees.

The Many Benefits of a Clear Strategy

The Two Numbers on Every Executive’s Mind

Today’s blog will be brief. Today, we are looking straight at reality. We are considering the two numbers that summarize the plight of most leaders: 90% and 95%.

In 2005, famed Harvard researchers Robert Kaplan and David Norton published a groundbreaking article on strategy.

The opening salvo of their research was a sobering number: out of nearly 2,000 large corporations round the world, 90% of them failed to achieve their strategic targets. Worse, the vast majority of them failed to achieve profitable growth - they did not grow enough to earn their cost of capital.

You may think that the state of business has improved since then. It has not. In 2013, McKinsey considered how companies generate economic profit. The landscape it revealed was as dire as when Kaplan and Norton published their paper. McKinsey found that 60% of companies in the “big middle” of the economic profit curve generated very little profit: only $29 billion. Most of the profit was created by the 20% of companies in the top quintile: a whopping $677 billion, 70x more than the middle. The bottom 20% of companies were 

Why does the vast majority of companies fail to meet their goals and grow? That is where the second number comes in. Kaplan and Norton found out that the single biggest factor to determine whether the strategy will be successful is obvious: 

the entire company must be aware of the strategy.

In their own words, “If the employees who are closest to customers and who operate processes that create value are unaware of the strategy, they surely cannot help the organization implement it effectively.”

Their research revealed that 95% of a company’s employees were unaware of, or did not understand, its strategy.

Here too, the number has barely budged since their article. In fact, The Predictive Index’s most recent CEO survey shows that in 2022 less than 1 in 2 companies have a business strategy to start with. The number has steadily eroded: it was 66% in 2020 and 76% in 2021, when the pandemic forced companies to be surgically focused on survival and adaptation strategies.

The absence of strategy in most companies means that employees are left on their own devices when it comes to figuring out on which basis to make key decisions. 

… The elite club of companies that achieve their objectives and create more value than they consume, that is.

The antidote to destroying value is simple. As Kaplan and Norton summarize with simplicity: “The goal is to make strategy everyone’s job.”

In small and medium-sized businesses, that means taking simple actions:

- Documenting the strategy, you are pursuing; if that strategy is in the head of the founder or the CEO, it is just a matter of writing it down and setting clearly stated objectives.

- Communicating this strategy to everyone, often: setting up town halls to share it formally and providing regular updates at every opportunity.

- As leaders, practicing “management by wandering around” to catch employees “in the act of doing something good” to reinforce the good behaviors in real time and being available to employees who have questions or suggestions about the strategy.

- Focusing dashboards and metrics on the outcomes that measure your execution.

- Training and developing your people to give them the tools they need to successfully perform the tasks that make the strategy happen.

When we intervene with CEOs to improve their strategy execution, we first assess how well their current strategy is understood in the organization. We use the Line-of-Sight platform to reach out to every employee and evaluate what they think the strategy is - we call it Strategic Understanding. We also evaluate the “execution health” of the company in the four other dimensions that matter:

- How is the leadership perceived to lead execution?

- How relevant are metrics for guiding people in their daily decisions?

- How related are daily activities to the strategy, and how does the structure make it easy to perform them?

- How well is talent recruited and developed to directly support the strategy?

The Line-of-Sight data identifies where execution capabilities are the most vulnerable, and we develop action plans that can focus on these areas only, leaving alone the parts of the organization that are already humming.

If you want to evaluate how much execution tax the lack of strategic understanding by employees cost you, give us a call. We can discuss how other companies have eliminated that tax, and how you can do it too.

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