Most CEOs I talk to take for granted that their employees agree with the organization’s strategic goals. But when I conduct surveys with their employees, that’s often not the case. In fact, more often than not, frontline employees don’t understand their strategy, let alone agree with it. And of course, if they neither understand nor agree with the organization’s strategy, how the heck are they supposed to execute it?

Because this issue is so important, and because Leadership IQ is a top survey company, we conducted a study to assess employees’ strategic awareness (essentially asking thousands of employees if they could articulate their organization’s strategic goals). The results were disturbing:

Disturbing Fact #1: Only 34% of employees said they could articulate the strategic goals of their organization. Wow. If ever there was a signal to CEOs that they needed to do a lot more work cascading their strategic vision to the frontlines, this was it.

Disturbing Fact #2: When we asked the 34% of employees who said they COULD articulate the strategic goals to ACTUALLY articulate them (i.e. you said you could do it, so now let’s see you do it), 51% got it wrong. Let me repeat that: Of the small number of employees who felt they could articulate the strategy, only half of them could do it correctly. If you do the math, all told, this leaves roughly 17% of all employees who can clearly articulate their organization’s strategic goals.

Obviously these are scary numbers for senior leaders. How can people execute our strategy when most don’t feel like they understand it? And even if they feel like they understand it, they might be wrong?

Well, as bad as this situation is, there’s still one more issue: What if people correctly understand our strategy but they don’t agree with it? If your annual employee survey asked a question like “I believe that senior leadership’s strategic vision will make this organization more successful,” you might discover that fewer than 40% of your employees think your strategy is good for the company.

If you’re a CEO, my goal here is not to depress you. Rather, I want you to know that you can’t simply assume everybody “gets” your strategy. You’ve got to test it: Do employees understand your strategy? Are they correct? Do they agree with it?

If you conduct an annual employee survey, you should use that opportunity to test whether your strategy is really getting through. (If you’re using the Leadership IQ employee engagement survey, you’re already covered).

I see way too many CEOs take this for granted. And ironically, it’s not because they haven’t already communicated their strategy but rather because they HAVE already communicated it. They say to themselves “I already told people about our strategy at the big meeting last month, so surely everyone is on board.” But the truth is that it’s nearly impossible to overcommunicate your strategy. You need to articulate it about 300% more than you think is necessary, and then you also need to translate it into bite-size chunks that each individual employee can really understand and take ownership of.

You don’t have to take my word for any of this; go out into your frontlines and test this for yourself. Survey people, talk to them, do focus groups, whatever. And don’t get upset when you discover everything I’ve said here applies to your organization. Be happy that you caught the issue before it got really serious and then use your newfound strategic alignment to great competitive advantage.

Don’t miss our upcoming teleconferences. The next few topics include:

* The Secrets of Killer Presentations
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* Hiring for Attitude
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* Overcoming a Culture of Entitlement
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* Managing & Motivating Your Superstar Employees
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