Strategy Execution Assessment

1.If you stopped five employees at random, they could each describe the organization's top priorities in their own words.

2.The strategy names specific choices — what we will do and what we will deliberately not do.

3.Strategic documents are written in plain language rather than jargon that only leadership understands.

4.Priorities are ranked, so people know what to do when two goals compete for the same time or budget.

5.The strategy has stayed stable enough over the past year that teams aren't constantly re-learning it.

1.Senior leaders bring up strategic priorities unprompted in regular meetings, not just at kickoff events.

2.Leaders' calendars and decisions visibly reflect the stated priorities.

3.Employees see leaders ask about progress on strategic goals, not only operational fires.

4.Leaders admit publicly when a strategic initiative isn't working, rather than letting it fade quietly.

5.Middle managers, not just executives, actively champion the strategy with their own teams.

1.Team-level goals were derived from the enterprise strategy, not written independently and reconciled after the fact.

2.An individual could trace their own weekly tasks back to a specific organizational goal.

3.When priorities shift at the top, team goals are revisited rather than left to drift out of sync.

4.Goals across different departments don't quietly work against each other.

5.New initiatives are checked against existing goals before being approved, to avoid overload.

1.Every strategic initiative has one named owner, not a committee.

2.Owners are expected to report on results, not just activity or effort.

3.There are real consequences — positive or corrective — tied to hitting or missing goals.

4.Roles and decision rights are documented clearly enough to resolve 'whose call is this' disputes quickly.

5.Underperformance on a goal leads to a conversation and a plan, not silence.

1.Each major goal has one or two metrics that genuinely indicate progress, not just activity counts.

2.Metrics are defined clearly enough that two different people would calculate them the same way.

3.Data for key metrics is available without a multi-day manual pull.

4.People trust the numbers on the dashboard enough to make decisions from them.

5.Metrics get reviewed on a fixed schedule rather than only when someone remembers to ask.

1.There's a regular, predictable rhythm of progress reviews at the team and enterprise level.

2.These reviews focus on removing obstacles, not just reporting status.

3.Reviews happen on schedule even when things are going well, not just when there's a crisis.

4.Action items from reviews are tracked to completion rather than disappearing until the next meeting.

5.The review cadence has stayed consistent for at least the past two quarters.

1.Teams know which other teams they depend on to hit their own goals.

2.Handoffs between departments have an owner on both sides, not just a general expectation.

3.Cross-team conflicts get resolved through an established process rather than escalation or avoidance.

4.Shared initiatives have a joint governance structure, not one team quietly leading and others following.

5.Dependency risks are flagged early enough to do something about them.

1.After a major initiative wraps up, there's a real retrospective — not just a celebration or a quiet close-out.

2.Lessons from one team's execution get shared with other teams facing similar work.

3.The planning and review process itself has changed in the past year based on what wasn't working.

4.People feel safe raising a process problem without it being treated as a complaint about a person.

5.Improvements to how the organization executes are treated as seriously as improvements to what it executes.