What Culture Surveys Reveal About Why Strategies Fail
New research from 9,834 employees at 36 organizations on strategy buy-in, execution, values and organizational barriers
The study finds that 72% of employees believe their company has to change, but only 45% believe in the strategy their company chose, and only 32% know what that strategy asks of them personally.
The findings come from Leadership IQ’s Culture Survey, which measures how employees view their company’s strategy, leadership and culture.
Most employees already believe the company has to change
“I believe this organization has to continue to change in order to be successful.”
Question from Leadership IQ's Culture Survey
72% of employees believe their organization has to keep changing in order to be successful. That is the good news in this report, and it's worth pausing on, because when a strategy stalls, leaders usually blame resistance to change.
The data says otherwise. Nearly three out of four employees already accept that standing still isn't an option.
If your culture survey shows these kinds of results, stop spending your communications selling the need for change. Your employees already understand that standing still isn’t an option. Use that time instead to explain why you chose this strategy, what it requires employees to do differently, and what you’re going to remove that gets in their way.
Far fewer believe the strategy you picked is the right change
“I think the strategy the organization is currently pursuing will make us more successful.”
Question from Leadership IQ's Culture Survey
Only 45% of employees believe the strategy the company is currently pursuing will make it more successful. Put those first two numbers side by side: 72% want change, but only 45% believe in this particular change.
Among the employees who agree the company must change, nearly half aren't convinced the strategy you've chosen is the right one. They're not against change. They're just not sold on yours.
Use the culture survey to identify the departments least convinced by the strategy, and explain the rationale there first. Show employees what changed in the market or business, what alternatives leadership considered, why this strategy won, and what evidence would cause leadership to rethink it.
Many doubt the strategy can be achieved without compromising your values
“I believe we can achieve our strategy without compromising our values.”
Question from Leadership IQ's Culture Survey
Only 47% of employees believe the strategy can be achieved without compromising the company's values. That means more than half of your workforce has doubts.
Maybe they think the targets will require cutting corners. Maybe they see a gap between what leadership says the company values and what people actually get rewarded for doing. Employees who believe the strategy conflicts with the values will hesitate to fully execute the strategy.
Use the culture survey to identify which values are most likely to collide with your strategy, and where those conflicts are most acute. Then make the rule explicit. Publicly establish which value or standard wins when achieving the strategy puts the two in conflict.
Two out of three employees don't know what they're supposed to do differently
“I understand how I will need to think and act differently to achieve the organization's strategy.”
Question from Leadership IQ's Culture Survey
Only 32% of employees understand how they will need to think and act differently to achieve the strategy. A strategy only becomes real when people change what they do on Monday morning, and two-thirds of employees can't tell you what that change is supposed to look like in their own job.
You can't execute a strategy when most employees don't know what execution looks like in their own job.
Use the culture survey to identify the departments where the strategy hasn’t translated into day-to-day behavior. Then gather the managers and key employees in those areas and answer: “Because of this strategy, what should people in this department do differently next month?” If the answers are things like “collaborate more,” “innovate,” or “focus on customers,” keep going until you get specific, observable behaviors.
Most don't believe they can fix what's standing in the way
“When I find a process that wastes time, I am able to get it changed.”
Question from Leadership IQ's Culture Survey
Only 31% of employees believe that when they find a process that wastes time, they can get it changed. That's the lowest score of the five questions.
Every strategy runs into obstacles: broken processes, outdated procedures, rules that made sense five years ago. The people who find those obstacles first are the people on the front lines executing the strategy.
Use the culture survey to ask employees which process gets in the way most, then fix one fast. Tell employees exactly why you fixed it: “You told us this process was making the strategy harder to execute, so we removed it.” That gives people visible evidence that the strategy can actually change how the organization works.
The problem is different in every part of the company
Knowing that your strategy has an execution problem still isn't enough. You need to know which problem is occurring where. The same strategy can get stuck for completely different reasons in different parts of the company.
Employees may understand the strategy and believe in where the company is going, but the processes around them make it difficult to execute.
The issue here isn't understanding what the strategy requires. It's whether the pressure to deliver it will force choices employees believe conflict with the values.
Before worrying about execution, leadership has a conviction problem to solve.
They may understand the strategy at a company level without knowing what it changes about their own work.
Those four problems require four different responses. Explaining the strategy again won't fix a broken process in Manufacturing. A process-improvement initiative won't convince Operations that the strategy is right. More communication about the rationale won't tell Marketing what people need to do differently.
A company-wide score can tell you that you have a problem. Executing the strategy requires knowing which problem you have in each part of the company.
You know what 9,834 employees said. Now find out what yours would say.
The numbers in this report are averages across 36 organizations. Your company will have its own pattern.
Your employees may believe the company needs to change but question the strategy you chose. They may believe in the strategy but not know what they need to do differently. One department may be struggling with processes that get in the way, while another sees a conflict between the strategy and your values.
Those are very different problems, and they require very different actions.
Leadership IQ’s Culture Survey shows you which problems are occurring, where they’re occurring, and what you should tackle first. Results can be analyzed by department, and follow-up questions can identify specific issues such as the processes employees want changed or the values they believe are most at risk.
You’ve bet the company’s next few years on your strategy. Before you communicate it again, launch another initiative, or assume you know what’s slowing execution down, find out what your employees actually think.
See what a culture survey could reveal in your company
Choose a time below and we’ll discuss what you’re trying to learn about your culture and strategy, what we could measure, and the analyses that would be most useful for your organization.
About the data. Findings are based on 9,834 employees at 36 midsized organizations who answered the full set of strategy questions on Leadership IQ's Culture Survey (10,461 total respondents). Employees answered on a 7-point scale. Throughout this report, an employee counts as believing or understanding a statement when they rated it a 6 or 7. Department figures use the same standard; the four departments shown are the largest in the sample (Manufacturing/Production n=2,398; Sales n=2,112; Operations n=1,463; Marketing n=726). Percentages in the text are rounded to whole numbers.
