PRESS RELEASE

Nearly half of business decision makers do not believe their company has a strategic vision

• Global study of 4,000 employees, including 1,000 decision makers from across the UK, US, Germany and Australia
• 49% of business decision makers do not believe their company has a strategic vision
• Six in ten (59%) decision makers believe that board decisions are made without understanding the needs of customers
• 76% of decision makers felt their organisation surveyed customers but only 24% had an adequate process to use this knowledge

A new global study of employees by Arlington Research and the Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) has found nearly half of decision makers (49%) do not believe their company has a strategic vision. With the world finding itself in a global pandemic and with rising unemployment figures, many employees are looking to their boards for strong leadership, but the research shows a worrying level of neglect when it comes to strategic vision.

A critical part of any strategy is to understand the problem a business is trying to solve, so it is encouraging to see 76% of the 1,000 decision makers questioned stating that they regularly survey their customers. Interestingly, only 55% of employees agreed with this statement, which shows a clear disconnect internally. In addition, over a third of employees (37%) said their organisation didn’t have an adequate process to share knowledge of customer needs upwards in the company and worryingly, 56% of decision makers agreed.

This led to six in ten (59%) of decision makers stating that they believe the board makes decisions in their organisation without understanding the needs of their customers. This was slightly better in the UK with 56% of decision makers and 42% of employees agreeing.

“How can a company hope to implement any worthwhile tactics if the strategy and thinking behind it hasn’t been adequately communicated to employees?” questions Chris Daly, chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Marketing. “If your team isn’t clear on how a strategy has been created and what it’s based on, you run the risk of them not being 100% behind the approach.”

Continuing this theme, it isn’t just the line of communication going up the organisation, which is lacking, with only 59% of employees saying they receive regular communication from management about business performance.

“Once you have a robust strategy backed up with insight and data, you are only part of the way there. Now you need your staff to implement the plan and deploy the appropriate tactics,” continued Daly. “Winning hearts and minds is key, only when your staff understand the thinking behind the key decisions will they really put their heart and soul into it, making it a success.”

Likewise, less than half of employees (45% in the UK) believe their organisation monitors how the competition communicates in the public domain while almost two fifths (37%) of employees believe their competitors’ marketing is better than theirs.

“Customers, competition and communication. Understanding the importance of all three of these are critical for any business plan to succeed,” States Paul Stallard, MD Arlington Research. “The worry from our research was the amount of businesses who are blindly focusing on specific tactics and approaches regardless of insight. Now is the time to understand the full picture and create a strategy that employees can get excited about and fully behind,” concludes Stallard.

Further findings from CIM and Arlington Research’s survey are available via the market research blog while CIM members can download the full report from MyCIM. Additional content will also be made available on the Exchange content hub and CIM newsroom in the coming weeks. 

ENDS

Research Methodology

The survey was conducted online between 30 July and 11 August 2020, surveying 4,000 respondents, with 3,000 respondents using IT as part of their role and 1,000 respondents being decision makers within the business. The respondents worked for businesses with a minimum of 10 employees. Respondents came from the US (1,000 respondents), UK (1,000 respondents), Germany (1,000 respondents) and Australia (1,000 respondents). A minimum of 250 respondents per country had a decision-making role.

About CIM

The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) is the world’s leading professional body for marketing, with over 28,000 members worldwide, of which there are over 2,500 Chartered Marketers. CIM’s mission is to create a marketing advantage for the benefit of professionals, business and society with a focus on export, data and skills. CIM believes marketing is the critical factor in driving long term organisational performance.

CIM provides members and organisations with five key benefits:

• Partnership – CIM is a professional and organisational partner to support performance and career development
• Education – CIM allows individuals and businesses to continuously upskill
• Information – CIM keeps members up to date with the latest marketing thinking, and keeps organisations at the forefront of practices
• Connection – CIM provides access to services, expertise and peers
• Recognition – CIM is the global benchmark of professional competence

For more than 100 years, CIM has supported, represented and developed marketers, teams, leaders and the profession as a whole. There are 120 CIM study centres in 32 countries and exam centres in 132 countries worldwide. In the last year, over 7,500 people registered at over 230 UK CIM events. Find out more about CIM by visiting www.cim.co.uk

About Arlington Research

Arlington Research is a full-service independent market research agency. We provide clients from around the world with robust data via quantitative research, in depth exploration via qualitative research, and audits on what’s out there already via desk research. All our team are director level and focused on providing intelligent analysis and creative insight that help our clients bring their story to life.

Our director-level team will design your research from sample design to final reporting. Each piece of research is reliable, robust, delivered with a quick turnaround, and analysed to ensure the research creates maximum impact. Our scope of work is broad, and we run research for leading brands and organizations from many different sectors. We are experienced in researching hard-to-reach audiences and markets and we would love to help bring your story to life. www.arlingtonresearch.global