STRATEGY EXECUTION & BUSINESS PERFORMANCE STUDY
Executive Summary
In 2007, SUMMIT conducted the first in an annual series of Strategy Execution and Business Performance studies. The studies, which poll employees across a variety of industries, roles, and functional areas, are designed to shed light on the prevalence of certain management practices and the relationship of those practices to performance.
This Executive Summary presents the overall study results, our initial observations, and a few proposed correlations between organization size, the degree to which information is shared with employees, and morale.
Respondent demographics are provided at the bottom of this section.
How to Use This Information
After reviewing the complete study results, look at the breakout that corresponds to your particular organization's size to give you a sense of where you stand relative to your peers. You may also want to look at results from larger organizations to preview the practices you'll want to consider as you grow.
Complete Study Results
Summary of Findings
We compiled the data and applied several filters to explore correlations. Although we did not isolate all thevariables that could potentially affect morale, we nonetheless believe the findings to be instructive. Our initial observations are outlined below.
Use of Management Processes
As we would expect, medium and large organizations (>100 employees) reported greater use of management processes to inform and coordinate their people. Organizations in that peer group with good management processes reported significantly higher levels of morale than was reported by those with fewer management processes. On the other hand, small organizations (< 100 employees) reported reasonably high morale even without extensive use of management processes. Smaller organizations that reported using more management processes than their peers reported higher morale, but did not demonstrate the same degree of improvement in morale as their larger counterparts.
Sharing Performance Information
On average, “poor” morale was more prevalent at large organizations (increasing from 7% - Small, 15% - Medium, to 22% - Large). However, results show that organizations that keep employees better informed experience considerably higher levels of morale (and presumably better financial performance, although we did not survey for that). What’s more, respondents from the pool of large organizations with good processes reported the best levels of morale. And those from large organizations with the highest percentages of “sharing performance information” reported three times the percent of responses in the highest two morale categories vis-à-vis their peers who reported sharing very little performance information.
Ability to Describe the Strategy
Overall there was a strong positive correlation between employee morale and “ability to describe the strategy.” When the data group of medium and large organizations was filtered between those reporting low morale and those reporting high morale, we noted that those with high morale report 2.5 times more often that 75% or more of employees are able to describe the strategy. And 50% of these organizations report having an active Balanced Scorecard -- a 10-fold increase over organizations where few are able to describe the strategy.The study shows a similar although slightly less dramatic correlation in small organizations, where those with high morale report 1.8 times more often that 75% or more employees are able to describe the strategy. This group also reports a 300% increase in the use of an active Balanced Scorecard.
Closing
We believe that growing organizations benefit from the increased use of processes that inform and coordinate the people within them. This small study bears that out. We continue our analysis of the current results and will repeat the study in 2008. We invite you to participate in the next survey, and to send us any suggestions or questions you may have.
Download a PDF version of the Executive Summary and Study Results
Respondent Demographics
- Responses
187 completions- 47 partials
- Business Category
- 80% for profit
- 20% non profit/government
- Organization/Division/Department
- 50% whole organization
- 50% division/department
- Company Size by Employees
- 43% < 100 employees (Small)
- 24% 100-500 employees (Medium)
- 33% > 500 employees (Large)
- Revenue
- 35% $10 million
- 30% $10 million to $100 million
- 35% $100 million and above (including 25% at $500 million or above
- Role/Title
- Even mix of senior management, middle management, and staff/support