Obviously, during difficult times, it’s critical that everyone from the executive team to frontline workers remain aligned on the company’s strategy and priorities. But the fact is, even during the best of times, if you want your business to perform at its best … strategic alignment is imperative.

One of the keys to maintaining alignment is intentional and sustained communication from the C-suite. In fact, a recent study, Why good strategies fail: Lessons for the C-suite, conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit, states a top barrier to successful enterprise execution is communication; more specifically, poor communication around the strategy.

The study also asked leaders …

“When strategic initiatives do succeed, what are the main reasons?”

No surprise: Consistent communication was frequently cited as a top factor in achieving success.

Yet, a recent Forbes Insights report stated 73 percent of executives say they must increase communication to improve strategy execution and employee buy-in.

These data points prove one thing.

Intentional and sustained communication is absolutely critical if you want to secure strategic alignment across your workforce. Maybe that’s why James Allen and Eric Garton, partners at Bain & Company, and authors of The Founder’s Mentality, say …

“Great CEOs get it: Part of the job is stakeholder alignment. And in many ways, that’s the execution element of a CEO — meaning, for a CEO, execution is communication to stakeholders. They (CEOs) think about who are the stakeholders I need to talk to? For each, what is the right message? And also, what’s the right cadence of delivery?”

“Most of the CEOs I know spend an inordinate amount of time aligning stakeholders behind their plan. They care both about the content of the messages, but also about the speed at which they are executing those messages and those decisions.”

If you are a business leader or C-suite executive, your takeaway is this …

If you want your business to achieve optimal performance — you must activate the story behind your strategy — across your organization.

That’s Your OnMessage Minute.