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“Limited Upside in Flying Blind”: Driving Strategic Insight • 173

helped managers take steps to maintain high quality and grow shareholder
value.
With this understanding in place, Mark’s job took on a whole new
meaning. When he saw patterns in the numbers, he got excited because
he could connect them with something fundamental. Within a few days,
Mark became part of the conversation on improving performance. Going
back to perform an analysis that nobody else had considered doing, he
noticed that one particular retailer had received more bad product than
others over the course of the past 6 months. Now things were getting excit-
ing. Mark brought this to the attention of the account manager and the
operations lead. Together the managers determined an action plan to
ensure that this customer, who didn’t deserve sub-par treatment, would
not be subject to it any longer. What had started as a disappointing
experience eventually led to Mark developing a special interest in his
managerial accounting classes the following fall (classes that focused not
on financial accounting and more on using accounting to identify
improvement opportunities). As he had learned, accounting was not just
about adding up numbers; it had a real impact on business decisions,
management, and company performance. A single conversation about
strategy, done right, transformed his internship and helped determine his
ultimate career path. Even without consideration of the free ice cream,
Häagen-Dazs had offered the perfect internship experience.
Companies today spend a lot of time and money making sure they get
their strategies right. Yet they usually fall short in communicating that strat-
egy to new hires and existing employees alike. According to the tests we’ve
conducted, if you ask five of your peers to articulate what your company’s,
business unit, or functional strategy is, you are likely to get five answers
that barely resemble one another. People are fuzzy not only about what
the firm’s future direction is, but the reasons behind what the current oper-
ations are designed to accomplish. What are we really doing right now?
What exactly is our business model? How do we think differently than our
competitors, and why? What are we doing to win in the marketplace? Why
will it work and what will it do for us? And what impact should these
answers have on how I perform in my specific role?
Most firms today do not integrate strategy education into orientation
for any rank of employee, lower level or executives. New hires usually get,
at most, a cursory presentation of the company’s “mission and vision.” The