New Research Links Organizational Underperformance with Rampant Employee Confusion

February 11, 2015 — San Diego, CA – February 11, 2015 — New research reveals that only 15% of organizations say key results are clearly defined in a way that employees at all levels can engage, pointing to a large-scale and prevalent misalignment around key organizational goals. The result is widespread confusion, significant organizational underperformance, and failure to meet key objectives among the majority of the world’s companies. The findings were taken from the 2014 Workplace Accountability Study conducted by Partners In Leadership, a leading training and consulting firm.

“This new research really reveals what employees think is going on—or not going on,” said Roger Connors, CEO of Partners In Leadership, the study’s sponsor. “Organization leaders should recognize the downstream consequences of underdefined and poorly communicated key results. In our work with thousands of companies, we’ve found that when people actually know what they’re expected to achieve, businesses thrive. Not defining key results and worse still, failing to communicate them throughout the organization, may be the most expensive management oversight ever and a tragedy at nearly every level.”

“Surprisingly, employees across the organization often have competing views of what their organizations aim to achieve, something that can be remedied by clearly defined, organization-wide key results,” continued Connors. “Organizations serious about change—the best organizations—typically define a small handful of memorable, measurable, meaningful key results—usually 3 to 5—and thereby reduce employee confusion to nearly zero. Nothing creates alignment more surely than a clear statement of the results you want to achieve.”

For more information, attend one of Partners In Leadership’s upcoming complimentary webinars on workplace accountability or visit their “2015: Your Year of Culture” page for a set of free resources on the subject.

About the Workplace Accountability Study

Recently, Partners In Leadership completed the largest study of its kind—with over 40,000 participants from thousands of organizations over the course of three years—on the subject of workplace accountability. Learn more about additional results from the Workplace Accountability Study by Partners In Leadership.

A Management Team Success Story

Read the full story of how Brinker International, one of the world’s leading casual dining restaurant companies with over 100,000 team members reduced their key results from 40 to four, resulting in a 10x increase in price per share, a return of 20% profit to shareholders, industry-leading guest satisfaction scores, and their lowest employee turnover rate.

An Example of Management Team Confusion

From Change the Culture, Change the Game, the New York Times bestselling book on optimizing organizational culture by Roger Connors and Tom Smith.

Would it surprise you to learn that nine out of ten management teams cannot describe with complete alignment the key results their organizations need to achieve? For instance, one company we worked with, a growing regional fast-food chain in the southwestern United States, “The Fast Grill,” was planning to launch a massive nation-wide expansion and needed to improve their its profit margin in order to do that. In a planning meeting, we asked the Grill’s top management staff, “What are the three Key Results you most need to achieve as an organization?” Everyone on the team replied, “Profit margin.” At first it seemed as if they were aligned around this result. But any appearance of alignment quickly disappeared with the answer to the next question, “What’s the number?” One executive called out, “5.5 percent.” Another immediately disagreed, chiming in with “3.5 percent.” Then another quickly reacted with a bit of exasperation, “I thought we agreed it was 7.5 percent.”

We turned to the CEO, who was intently listening to this discussion, thinking that she could settle this matter and clarify the number. When we asked her for the number, she responded adeptly, saying, “It’s somewhere between 3.5 and 7.5 percent.” Ignoring the laughter, she continued, “Let me explain: 3.5 percent is the number we told corporate we could hit, 5.5 percent is the number we think we will hit, and 7.5 percent is our stretch goal.” Believe it or not, this management team is not alone. Confusion about results is all too common in most organizations.