How Continuous Performance Management Drives Strategic Alignment

When a company drifts out of alignment, everything gets harder. Goals are missed. Priorities don’t connect. Execution slows to a crawl. Strategic misalignment can be triggered by major events like M&A or hypergrowth, but just as often, it creeps in through operational inefficiencies and miscommunication. Leaders delay setting clear goals while they reframe business strategy; employees are left without a rudder and build workarounds. Productivity wanes, frustration rises, and the organization’s confidence erodes. But, continuous performance management (CPM) drives the strategic alignment companies need to keep their workforce rowing in the same direction. 

Below, we’ll unpack the nine most common strategic misalignment challenges, including five root causes and four downstream effects. We’ll also show how continuous performance management (CPM) addresses them at the source. When goals, communication, coaching, and data live in a continuous loop instead of once-a year rituals, strategy stays visible and execution stays tight.

9 challenges to organizational alignment

There are five core causes of misalignment. Solve these, and you’ll avoid four costly downstream effects that sap engagement, culture, agility, and talent.

1) Inconsistent, rigid, and outdated goals

Misalignment often begins with goal quality and cadence. Teams pursue conflicting priorities, goals go stale, and employees feel trapped by targets that no longer reflect reality.

According to the Betterworks 2022 State of Performance Enablement report, nearly half of employees said they felt stuck with irrelevant goals by year’s end, and only about a third had the ability to adjust goals more than once or twice a year – typically in systems far outside the flow of work. Employees set-and-forget. By midyear, business needs have changed, but goals haven’t, creating confusion and disengagement.

2) Poor goal visibility

Even when goals are well-constructed, leaders and employees can’t align around what they can’t see. Executives need to know who is doing what, how it maps to company objectives, and whether efforts are duplicative or misdirected. Without transparency across teams, managers struggle to staff intelligently and to spot overlaps or gaps because they can’t see if the right people are working on their right goals.

Employees feel the turbulence most acutely: unclear targets, duplicative projects, and lack of clarity about how their performance is being evaluated. If you’re running dozens of projects in silos, the risks compound—duplicated work, missed dependencies, and a “lockdown” approach to goals that prevents healthy cross-team coordination.

3) Poor communication and unclear expectations

A recent global survey by Skillsoft found that fewer than half of employees were told about their organization’s strategic goals and priorities for the coming year, and among those, only 40% were clear about their role. 

Alignment that looks solid to the C-suite often breaks down deeper in the organization. Goals pushed through an HRIS can feel like tasks without context. Because many companies lack a reliable cadence for conversations, months can pass before priorities reach the teams doing the work.

4) Ineffective and undersupported managers

Managers are the critical link between strategy and action. If they aren’t trained, coached, and equipped with the right tools, the cadence of communications, feedback, and course-correction to ensure that goals are met sputters. 

The 2024 State of Performance Enablement report revealed that 64% of people managers reported a lack of clarity about their role, and two-thirds wanted more support guiding employees on skills, career development, and performance management.

5) Siloed and opaque data

Fragmented systems create fragmented decisions. When information lives across Jira, Salesforce, Asana, spreadsheets, and LMS tools – and none of it connects back to a single source of performance truth – leaders can’t see progress, risks, or outcomes without manual wrangling. Pulling it together takes months and still leaves blind spots.

The downstream costs if you don’t fix the root causes

Tackle those five issues and you sidestep four painful consequences. Ignore them and you’ll feel the drag on people and performance.

6) Employee dissatisfaction and disengagement. When people don’t see how their work connects to strategy, their sense of purpose evaporates. Frequent changes without explanation, or projects that start and stop, leave employees feeling unmoored and skeptical.

7) Difficulty attracting and retaining top talent. Disengagement leads to attrition risk. High performers won’t join – or won’t stay – at organizations with unclear or conflicting strategies.

8) Erosion of organizational culture. Misalignment fragments culture into competing subcultures. Collaboration weakens, and teams revert to local priorities because they can’t see the shared mission.

9) Reduced business agility and innovation. Siloed execution and limited cross-functional visibility delay decisions, waste resources, and stall strategic initiatives. It’s hard to pivot quickly – or experiment – when no one has a unified picture of progress.

How continuous performance management realigns strategy and execution

Betterworks’ continuous performance management software addresses misalignment at the root. Instead of treating symptoms – like chasing engagement scores or bolting on recognition – CPM connects goals, conversations, feedback, and data into one ongoing loop. Strategy stays in view, adaptable to change, and reinforced in the flow of daily work.

Delivers flexible, transparent goal management

Strategic alignment is hard; simplicity helps. With a modern goal framework (OKRs or beyond), leadership can cascade strategic objectives down while employees “ladder up” their individual and team goals. This creates a living map of how work connects to the broader mission. As priorities evolve, goals evolve with them, without waiting for an annual or semi-annual checkpoint.

In practice, Betterworks’ flexible goal-setting means anyone can quickly create, align, and adjust goals – often with AI assistance to strengthen clarity and measurability. Crucially, these goals live where work happens: inside everyday apps, with lightweight progress updates that are easy to maintain. That lowers friction for employees and gives leaders continuous visibility into progress.

Extends visibility across the organization

When goals are transparent, duplication drops and accountability rises. With Betterworks Goals, teams can see company objectives, their managers’ goals, and how their goals connect, so they share a clear picture of what matters now. Leaders can scan real-time progress without chasing status updates, and managers experience fewer surprises as plans shift. Learn how HR can drive alignment and accountability by helping managers develop the right structure for goal setting.

Creates clarity with structured, simple communication

Clarity isn’t a once-a-year event; it’s a management habit. Betterworks Goals, Conversations, 1;1 Feedback, and recognition capabilities live in one loop so that everyone knows what matters and why. Structured, repeatable conversations – guided by customizable templates – make that clarity routine. Coaching, next steps, and goal updates can happen inside the same conversation, tied to current data. Employees can also request feedback or start a conversation when they need help, and all of it is captured so it can inform performance later.

Drives manager quality at scale

Improving your managers’ effectiveness requires giving them the tools they need to clearly communicate expectations and keep conversations and work in sync. Side-by-side views of team and individual goals, conversation updates, and prompts to connect employee goals to the manager’s objectives make priorities concrete.

Betterworks Conversation, 1:1s, and Feedback templates make recurring touchpoints easy to do and easy to repeat. Automated nudges remind everyone when a conversation is overdue, how long it’s been since they’ve provided feedback, and when it’s time to check up on an employee’s goal progress. Notes, feedback, and recognition live in one place, so managers can spot who’s getting feedback (and who isn’t) to ensure coverage and fairness.

Provides data that’s integrated, visible, and actionable

A single record of goals, feedback, and recognition eliminates “decisions by memory.” Betterworks integrations with systems like Jira, Salesforce, and Asana enable a unified view of data to guide performance. Using Beterworks Analytics, HR can use pre-built dashboards and self-serve reporting, including one-click decks, to get the exact data cuts they need without waiting for a business analyst. The payoff: timely visibility, faster course corrections, and more goals hit, quarter after quarter.

Strategic alignment with Betterworks at a glance

Challenge	Need	Betterworks solution
Inconsistent, rigid, and outdated goals	Flexibility to review and adjust goals to reflect changing business needs to avoid execution failures and wasted effort.	Goals and AI Goal Assist help everyone set strong goals efficiently connected up and down the org, adjust goals to respond to changing requirements, and maintain relevance through access in daily work.
Poor goal visibility	Transparency into team and individual progress to ensure efficiency andaccountability.	Goals and progress can be made visible company-wide so that everyone sees others’ goals in real time and understands how their work impacts the rest of the team and other teams.
Poor communication, unclear expectations	Enable employees to row in the same direction and avoid duplicated efforts, missed deadlines, and inefficiencies.	Goals, Conversations, 1:1s, Feedback, and recognition capabilities provide structured, straightforward processes for frequent, clear, and documented communications about roles, responsibilities, and priorities.
Ineffective and undersupported managers	Assist managers in clearly communicating strategic business goals to teams, checking progress, and maintaining alignment.	Conversation, 1:1s, Feedback, and automated nudges provide the structure and coaching managers need to keep employees in sync.
Siloed and opaque data	Comprehensive and accessible data that provides a single source of truth.	Betterworks’ performance management platform, integrations, and Advanced Analytics together provide a holistic view of workforce activity that is thorough and fresh.

Case study: The Driving Force Group makes alignment a daily habit

The Driving Force Group set a bold five-year “Mission to Mars” to balance financial performance with a people-first culture. Their performance practices were a patchwork of local routines—few shared goals, inconsistent conversations, and limited visibility. By making top priorities and executive goals visible, establishing a lightweight conversation cadence, and adopting an employee-owned/manager-supported approach to development and recognition, they rewired how work aligns to strategy.

The results: 100% executive goal adoption; 88% of employees reporting clarity on goals and responsibilities (beating the target); and 70% of positive employee comments citing better teamwork and collaboration. Employees and managers describe the platform as intuitive, with clear executive goals helping everyone stay aligned and deepening belonging. Ongoing Engage surveys and AI insights then guide where to focus next, turning alignment from a static plan into a continuous practice.

Read the case study

Making strategic alignment easier for HR

Alignment at scale isn’t a memo—it’s an operating system. HR’s job is to make it simple, adoptable, and resilient across shifting business conditions.

Flexibility and configurability

Different teams, different needs—same framework. Configure goals and performance cycles, design conversation and feedback templates by function, and create dashboards or surveys on the fly without an IT ticket. You get consistency where it matters, plus room for departments to support unique workflows.

Simplicity and adoption

A consumer-grade UI plus AI assistance makes the experience intuitive for everyone – from a new hire on day one to an executive preparing QBRs. When it’s effortless to see, update, and discuss goals, people use it. That’s the adoption flywheel: employees adopt it, managers use it, and HR loves it.

Expert implementation and support

Change is easier with a guide when you’ve got support from seasoned pros. The Betterworks Professional Services team partners from rollout through expansion, with a 95%+ on-time implementation rate and NPS in the 90s. That builds confidence and accelerates time to value.

The continuous loop that powers strategic alignment

Strategic misalignment is rarely about strategy—it’s about execution. In a well-aligned organization, goals live in the flow of work and evolve with the business; conversations clarify expectations and adjust plans; feedback is weekly, and data is unified and ready. Continuous performance management connects these elements into one loop, so people see how their work matters, managers coach with confidence, and leaders pivot with facts—turning alignment into a daily habit where clarity compounds and the organization learns faster, moves sooner, and outperforms.