Published: 15 February 2024
Only a minority of ongoing business actions align with corporate strategy, too often making already-set corporate strategy obsolete. CFOs should use this research to identify the high-leverage points where they can drive better strategic alignment via their business-facing finance staff.
Often, business actions are not aligned with already-set corporate strategy. Only 46% of business executives and managers believe their own efforts align with corporate strategy, and only 30% of corporate strategists report their organizations’ execution efforts align with corporate strategy.
Strategic misalignment occurs for two primary reasons: Business decision makers lack ongoing visibility into critical project interdependencies and make poor in-the-moment choices when under pressure to react to change.
CFOs themselves can’t and shouldn’t intervene in the everyday decisions that drive strategic misalignment, but they can act preemptively to alert their business-facing finance staff (primarily business unit CFOs and finance
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