Organizational Gap Framework
The Alignment Illusion.
Leaders can see evidence of alignment while gaps are forming between strategy, execution, and culture.
Organizational Gap Framework
Leaders can see evidence of alignment while gaps are forming between strategy, execution, and culture.
“There were little signs that things were not going well but not enough to feel like the effort was off track. Then all of a sudden, I find myself in a meeting and realize, holy smoke, we are actually really disconnected here.”Senior technology executive · OGF qualitative study
The External Problem
Strategic initiatives may begin with clear direction and capable leadership, yet still lose their connection to everyday priorities and decisions.
The Internal Problem
The decision and the resulting action no longer match. Dashboards may document the outcome without explaining where the disconnect developed.
The Structural Reality
Organizational gaps often develop in the connections among strategy, execution, and culture. Standard reports may show each area separately while missing the problem between them.
The Alignment Illusion
The foundational study introduces the alignment illusion: a proposed structural and cognitive pattern in which leaders may perceive meaningful alignment while material misalignment is developing elsewhere. The qualitative findings suggest that this pattern can emerge from how organizations filter information and signal agreement. It does not depend on a failure of intelligence or intent.
The foundational article develops two mechanisms identified in the qualitative study. Temporal accumulation remains a related proposition within the broader research program and requires further empirical examination.
As information moves up through organizational layers, negative signals can be softened, reframed, or withheld. The qualitative findings suggest that leaders may receive a version of organizational reality that overstates alignment and understates friction. By the time a problem reaches the executive level, the language may make it seem smaller and more manageable than it appears to people closer to the work.
Organizations may develop visible behaviors that signal agreement with strategic direction even while internal actions diverge. The qualitative study suggests that leaders can interpret these signals as alignment when they may instead reflect compliance. An initiative can therefore appear on track while receiving less practical commitment than its formal indicators imply.
The OGF proposes that gaps may accumulate through small decisions that each appear reasonable in isolation. Rather than one decision causing the misalignment, cumulative drift across many local choices may gradually weaken the connection between domains. This proposition remains part of the developing research agenda.
“Why didn’t anybody tell me this…we’ve wasted so much money.”Former consumer-services executive · OGF qualitative study
The Organizational Gap Framework examines organizational misalignment through relationships. In addition to looking at strategy, execution, and culture individually, it asks what is happening in the connections among them. Naming a possible gap gives leaders a more specific place to investigate.
The Framework
The OGF conceptualizes organizations as three interdependent domains connected by directional influence pathways. It proposes that some forms of misalignment may arise in the relational spaces between domains rather than within a single domain. Seeing those spaces can help leaders investigate the problem at a more precise level.
Domain 01
The perceived clarity and coherence of organizational direction: mission, vision, goals, and the degree to which leaders communicate a shared sense of where the organization is going and why.
Perceived ClarityDomain 02
The perceived reliability and capability of organizational systems: processes, structures, resource allocation, and the degree to which strategic direction is operationalized into consistent action.
Perceived ReliabilityDomain 03
The shared norms and values that shape behavioral consistency: identity, informal rules, and the degree to which organizational behavior aligns with stated values and strategic intent.
Behavioral ConsistencyThe Three Gaps
Within the OGF, a gap represents possible structural misalignment in the relationship between two domains. The framework asks leaders to examine that connection along with the individual domains before selecting an intervention.
↑ tap a gap label to learn more
SE Gap
The perceived misalignment between strategic intent and actual organizational priorities. A failure of translation: the organization knows what it is supposed to do, but execution systems do not faithfully enact it.
Executive Perspective
“Ask anybody in your organization, ‘What are your organization’s strategic priorities?’ and they can cite them. Then ask one more question, ‘What’s your role in accomplishing that?’ That’s where you can have breakdowns.”Executive participant · OGF qualitative study
EC Gap
The perceived inconsistency between how execution is managed and what the organization claims to value. Execution systems may signal priorities that contradict stated cultural values, contributing over time to cynicism or disengagement.
Executive Perspective
“People just think: OK, you just want the number and I’m really not that important. I’m just a means to help you get the number.”Executive participant · OGF qualitative study
CS Gap
The perceived misfit between organizational identity and strategic direction. A failure of identity: the organization’s cultural self-concept resists or subverts strategic change it experiences as a threat to who it fundamentally is.
Executive Perspective
“If your vision and strategy are so fundamentally different for the future than what made it successful, it’s really hard for people to envision something new.”Chief financial officer · OGF qualitative study
Each gap connects two domains, and influence may move from either domain toward the other. The OGF uses two directional pathways for each gap to describe how strategy, execution, and culture may shape one another. These pathways are theoretical propositions derived from the qualitative study and have not yet been quantitatively validated.
Teams understand how the strategy changes their roles, priorities, tradeoffs, and resource decisions. They can explain what they should do differently and what work should stop.
People can repeat the strategy, but role expectations, priorities, and resource decisions remain largely unchanged.
Operational results and frontline constraints reach decision makers and lead them to clarify, revise, or resequence the strategy when needed.
Reports move upward, but operational evidence has little effect on strategic assumptions or decisions.
Incentives, performance measures, and management routines consistently teach people which behaviors the organization values, especially under pressure.
Formal systems send inconsistent signals, so employees rely more heavily on local habits and informal expectations.
Shared norms strongly affect how people use formal processes, coordinate across boundaries, and hold one another accountable.
Established norms have less effect on whether people adopt new processes or follow formal operating expectations.
Leaders connect the strategy to the organization’s identity and history, helping people understand what the direction means for who they are and how they work.
The strategy is communicated mainly through plans and targets, with little connection to the organization’s identity or shared story.
Shared beliefs about the organization’s identity strongly shape which strategic options people view as credible, legitimate, or acceptable.
Organizational identity places fewer limits on the strategic options leaders and employees are willing to consider.
Strength is not the same as desirability. A strong pathway means that one domain has a pronounced influence on the other. That influence may support alignment or contribute to a gap, depending on its direction and effects.
Spillover Dynamics
The OGF proposes that a persistent gap in one boundary can affect adjacent domains, potentially producing visible symptoms away from where the misalignment began. Spillover remains a theoretical proposition that Phase 2 is intended to examine.
A gap may begin in the relationship between two domains. For example, strategy may not translate clearly into execution priorities and resource allocation.
Execution may adapt to the resulting ambiguity through informal workarounds and implicit priorities that diverge from stated strategic intent.
Culture may recalibrate to the execution reality people observe instead of the strategic narrative they hear. Cultural expectations can begin reflecting execution norms rather than strategic aspirations.
A visible symptom may appear in the culture domain, such as disengagement or cynicism. Leaders may then focus on culture while overlooking a possible strategy-to-execution source.
Diagnostic Implication
Visible symptoms may appear away from the relationship where the problem began. A perceived culture problem, for example, may warrant examining whether strategy-to-execution translation is contributing to it.
The Pattern
The spillover proposition asks whether problems attributed to culture, leadership, or people may sometimes be downstream effects of a gap in an adjacent relational boundary. Quantitative validation is needed to establish how consistently this pattern occurs.
Using the Framework
The OGF does not replace strategic planning or culture work. It offers leaders an additional relational lens for examining where the system may be breaking down before deciding where to intervene.
01 → Early Signs
The OGF’s directional model can help leaders look for early signals of misalignment, including changes in translation, execution feedback, and cultural interpretation, before those patterns become more difficult to address.
02 → Diagnosis
When a perceived culture problem may be connected to execution decisions, or an execution problem to strategy translation, the OGF provides questions that can broaden the diagnosis before leaders commit to an intervention.
03 → Response
Recurring organizational problems may warrant examining the relational boundary in addition to the individual domains. The OGF offers a way to consider that boundary as a possible target for intervention.
Possible Effects of Persistent Gaps
The OGF proposes that when a gap persists, its effects may extend beyond the relationship where it began. Over time, this can make the original source of friction harder to recognize and the response more difficult to target. Phase 2 will help examine these relationships more systematically.
Carefully developed strategic direction may fail to translate into execution priorities, resource allocation, or behavioral change when the connection between strategy and execution is weak.
Organizational culture may recalibrate to the execution reality people observe rather than the strategic narrative they are told, potentially contributing to cynicism, performative compliance, or disengagement.
Problems may return despite genuine investment in interventions when attention remains on a visible symptom and overlooks a possible relational gap.
A recurring difference between what leaders say and what the organization does can weaken trust in leadership direction and reduce willingness to invest in the next strategic initiative.
Research and Practice
Organizations can engage with OGF in two distinct ways: contribute to the Phase 2 research study, or begin a separate conversation about the framework’s practitioner implications. Research participation is not a consulting engagement and does not require purchasing services.
Research Program
The foundational OGF article introduces the relational framework and establishes the qualitative basis for the continuing research program.
Develops the core OGF through qualitative research with senior executives across varied roles and industries. The article introduces three relational gaps, six directional influence pathways, proposed spillover dynamics, and structural mechanisms that may help misalignment remain unseen.
Strategy & Leadership · Read the published article ↗
OGF Essays
Short essays drawn from the OGF research on strategy, execution, culture, and the connections among them.
Essay 01 · Alignment Illusion
How filtered information and visible compliance can give leaders a convincing but incomplete picture of alignment.
Read the essay →The Essay Series
Read the complete series on strategy, execution, culture, and the connections among them.
View all essays →For Practitioners
The relational model suggests a structured way to investigate organizational misalignment by examining relationships as well as the individual domains.
This developing assessment uses the three gap types and six directional pathways to help leadership teams examine where misalignment may be occurring and whether it may be connected to symptoms elsewhere.
Reflection guide in developmentAn organizational review informed by mechanisms associated with the alignment illusion. It explores filtering and compliance dynamics that may keep gaps less visible to senior leadership through normal reporting channels.
Practice resource in developmentA facilitated process for exploring whether visible symptoms may be connected to a relational gap elsewhere. It may be useful when recurring problems have not responded to interventions in the domain where symptoms appear.
Practice resource in developmentPractitioner Consultation
A practitioner pathway is being developed separately from the academic study. Contact Brian to discuss the framework’s implications for a live organizational challenge; participation in the research is not required.
Phase 2 · Quantitative Validation
Phase 2 will examine how strategy, execution, and culture align and where gaps between them may be creating friction. We are inviting organizations interested in the research and the practical insight its findings may offer.
Share your interest now and we will follow up when participation details and organizational outputs are finalized. There is no commitment at this stage.
About the Researchers
Brian D. Wiersma holds a DBA from Liberty University, where he serves as adjunct faculty and doctoral dissertation committee chair. A scholar-practitioner, he has led as a senior operations executive, including COO and Senior Director roles, across consumer services, franchising, and agriculture technology, grounding his research in direct leadership experience.
Matthew C. Mitchell is Associate Professor of International Business and Strategy at Drake University and holds a Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina. His research focuses on firm strategy, institutional context, and organizational legitimacy. A Partner of Bâton Global, he brings a scholar-practitioner perspective grounded in executive advisory work.
Research and practice disclosure: The academic research program and any practitioner support connected to OGF are distinct activities. Final conflict-of-interest, institutional, privacy, and human-subjects language will be posted before the site accepts research enrollment or participant data.