Most Employees Doubt Their Company’s Strategy Will Succeed, New Study Finds

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.

Whatever is slowing your strategy down, it isn't a workforce that wants everything to stay the same.

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 45% believe in this 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.

72% of employees want change, but only 45% believe in the change you chose.

Barely half understand the rationale behind the strategy

“I understand the rationale behind our strategy (for example, the economy, business and competitors).”

Question from Leadership IQ's Culture Survey

Only 48% of employees understand the rationale behind the strategy: the economic, competitive and business reasons the company chose this direction over the alternatives.

Most companies communicate the strategy constantly. Town halls, kickoff meetings, posters in the break room. But announcing a strategy and explaining the reasoning behind it are two different messages, and the second one rarely gets delivered.

Even among employees who believe in the strategy, a third don't understand the reasoning behind it. They support the strategy without being able to explain why it's the right one, and that makes their support fragile.

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. Whatever the reason, an employee who believes the strategy conflicts with the values will hesitate every time the two collide.

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.

Understanding the company's reasoning doesn't fix this. Among employees who do understand the rationale behind the strategy, more than half still don't know how their own work needs to change.

You can't execute a strategy when most employees don't know what execution looks like in their own job.

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 six 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. And two-thirds of them don't believe that raising the problem will get it fixed.

So most of them won't bother raising it.

In Manufacturing, the biggest problem is fixing broken processes

These company-wide numbers hide something important: each department has its own weakest link. Take Manufacturing. Manufacturing employees believe in the strategy more than the rest of the company does. 78% believe the company has to change, and 56% understand the rationale behind the strategy, both above the company average.

But only 28% of Manufacturing employees believe that when they find a process that wastes time, they can get it changed. The people running your production lines see the wasteful processes first, and they're among the least confident that anyone will fix them.

In Sales, the biggest problem is the values

Only 40% of Sales employees believe the strategy can be achieved without compromising the company's values, well below the company average of 47%.

Salespeople sit closest to the pressure of targets, quotas and quarter-end deadlines. When the department under the most pressure to deliver the numbers is also the one that doubts the numbers can be delivered honestly, that's worth taking seriously.

In Operations, the biggest problem is the strategy itself

Only 32% of Operations employees believe the current strategy will make the company more successful, twelve points below the company average.

Operations is usually the department that has to execute the largest share of any strategy. In these organizations, it's also the department least convinced the strategy is the right one. An unconvinced Operations team doesn't openly refuse a strategy. It just executes slowly.

In Marketing, the biggest problem is translation

Only 24% of Marketing employees understand how they will need to think and act differently to achieve the strategy. That's the lowest score on this question among the four largest departments, and eight points below an already-low company average.

Think about what that means. Marketing often writes the messages that explain the strategy to everyone else, while most of its own people don't know what the strategy asks of them.