Strategic Analytics - Advancing Strategy Execution and Organizational Effectiveness

What it’s about

Organizations drown in data yet still fail to execute strategy, largely because business leaders and HR run parallel, uncoordinated analyses that each tell only part of the story. Strategic Analytics offers a practical, three-step diagnostic—starting with competitive advantage, moving to enterprise analytics, and finishing with human capital analytics—that builds and tests a complete causal model of how performance actually happens. Alec Levenson, drawing on decades of work at USC's Center for Effective Organizations, shows how to avoid the traps of ROI myopia, data mining, and misleading correlations, and how to focus limited time and resources on the handful of truly strategic issues rather than the thousand 'nice-to-have' fixes. Grounded in real case studies (PwC, Frito-Lay, Boeing, executive coaching, banks, tech companies), the book teaches leaders, managers, and analysts to diagnose structural, design, and behavioral problems as an integrated system so their decisions genuinely advance competitive advantage.

The through-line

Who it’s for

A business or HR leader, manager, or analyst who wants to use analytics to genuinely improve strategy execution and organizational effectiveness.

The problem

Enterprise and human capital analytics are conducted separately, producing incomplete diagnoses that fail to solve strategy execution problems. The reader feels overwhelmed by mountains of data yet unsure which analytics matter, and frustrated that business and HR keep talking past each other.

The plan

1. Step 1: Identify the sources of competitive advantage and where strategy execution falls short (competitive advantage analytics).
2. Step 2: Diagnose the enterprise level—organization design, capability, and culture.
3. Step 3: Diagnose the human capital level—job design, individual capability, and attitudes/motivation.
4. Build and test a complete causal model, using stakeholder interviews first and statistics only where appropriate.
5. Get stakeholder alignment up front and time analytics to the planning cycle so results drive change.

The payoff

Better-informed decisions that channel budget dollars toward capabilities that create competitive advantage. · Avoidance of doomed solutions that ignore structural root causes. · Integrated business and HR analysis that closes each side's blind spots.

See our guide

• The Four-S Discipline — One System, Four Capabilities →
• Build a People Analytics Practice →
• Alignment — Does This Team Know What Matters And Where Effort Should Go? →

Related profiles we’ve built

• The basic principle of people analytics learn how to use hr data to drive better outcomes for your business and employees →
• Handbook of Regression Modeling in People Analytics →
• An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization →
• Apa Handbook Io V2 →
• Armstrongs Handbook of Strategic Human Resource Management Improve Business Performance Through Strategic People Management →
• Beyond Hr Boudreau Ramstad →
• The Differentiated Workforce →
• Drive Pink →

Additional reading

• Designing Matrix Organizations That Actually Work · Jay R. Galbraith

  Provides detailed guidance on organization design, decision rights, and matrix structures, which are core topics within the book's 'Enterprise Analytics' step.

• Employee Surveys That Work: Improving Design, Use, and Organizational Impact · Alec Levenson

  This is the author's other book, referenced frequently as a source for specific survey items and deeper analysis of employee attitudes, a key component of 'Human Capital Analytics'.

Featured in these guides

• Alignment — Does This Team Know What Matters And Where Effort Should Go? →Cited source
• Build a People Analytics Practice →Cited source