What's your method for measuring business strategy alignment?

1 Define your criteria

Before you can measure your alignment, you need to define what it means for your specific context. What are the key elements of your strategy, such as your value proposition, target market, differentiation, and growth drivers? What are the desired outcomes, such as revenue, market share, customer loyalty, and innovation? How do you communicate and cascade your strategy across your organization? Based on these questions, you can establish your criteria for alignment and identify the relevant indicators and metrics.

2 Use a maturity model

A maturity model is a tool that helps you evaluate your current state of alignment and identify the gaps and opportunities for improvement. It typically consists of a set of dimensions, such as leadership, culture, governance, processes, and systems, that reflect the aspects of your organization that affect your strategy execution. For each dimension, you can assign a level of maturity, such as ad hoc, defined, integrated, or optimized, based on the evidence and performance you observe. A maturity model can help you benchmark your alignment against best practices and set realistic and achievable goals for advancement.

3 Conduct a survey

A survey is a method that allows you to collect feedback and insights from your stakeholders, such as employees, customers, partners, and suppliers, on how well they understand, support, and experience your strategy. You can design a survey with questions that measure the awareness, alignment, and engagement of your stakeholders with your strategy, as well as their satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy. A survey can help you identify the strengths and weaknesses of your strategy communication and implementation, as well as the areas of misalignment and friction that need to be addressed.

4 Perform a SWOT analysis

A SWOT analysis is a technique that helps you assess your internal and external environment and how it affects your strategy alignment. It involves identifying your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that relate to your strategy and its execution. A SWOT analysis can help you leverage your competitive advantages, overcome your challenges, exploit your potential, and mitigate your risks. It can also help you align your strategy with the changing market conditions and customer expectations.

5 Apply a balanced scorecard

A balanced scorecard is a framework that helps you translate your strategy into a set of objectives, measures, targets, and initiatives that cover four perspectives: financial, customer, internal process, and learning and growth. It enables you to monitor and manage your strategy alignment and performance across multiple dimensions and levels of your organization. A balanced scorecard can help you align your activities and resources with your strategic priorities, communicate and cascade your strategy effectively, and evaluate and improve your results.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?