Only 28% of leaders could list three of their company’s priorities. 6 fixes to keep goals live when priorities move.

A Tuesday question for People leaders in Dublin, London, Amsterdam, Stockholm and Tallinn: since your goals were set this year, how many times has the business changed direction? A new product bet, a hiring freeze, a re-org, a big customer lost or won. Now, how many of those changes made it into the goals your managers will use in the year-end review?

Neutral research shows how wide that gap can be. Studies by Donald Sull and colleagues, published in MIT Sloan Management Review and Harvard Business Review, asked managers to list their company’s strategic priorities in their own words, and Gallup tracks how many employees know what is expected of them at work.

1. What the research actually says

In plain language:

• Leaders think strategy is clear; managers can’t list it. MIT Sloan Management Review: across 124 organisations, only 28% of executives and middle managers responsible for executing strategy could list three of their company’s strategic priorities.
• Even one priority is hard. Harvard Business Review: only 55% of the middle managers surveyed could name even one of their company’s top five priorities.
• The links between priorities are blurry. HBR: fewer than one-third of senior executives’ direct reports clearly understand the connections between corporate priorities, and the share falls to 16% for frontline supervisors and team leaders.
• More communication isn’t the fix. HBR: nearly 90% of middle managers believe top leaders communicate the strategy frequently enough. The problem is understanding, not volume.
• Employees feel it. Gallup: in the first half of 2026, 49% of US employees strongly agreed they know what is expected of them at work.
• Performance management isn’t closing the gap. Gartner (2019): less than one-fifth of HR leaders believe performance management is effective at achieving its primary objective.

Two honest caveats. First, these studies are not all recent: the HBR research is from 2015, the MIT SMR research from 2018 and the Gartner figure from 2019; only the Gallup figure is from 2026. Second, none of them measures exactly how often priorities change or how fast goals are updated, and Gallup’s figure is for US employees. They’re a useful signal for UK and European mid-market teams, not a controlled study. Revolut People, where I work, sells performance management software.

2. The mid-market hurdle: goals set in January, business changed by March

In a 200–600 person company, the pattern is easy to spot. Goals are agreed at the start of the year, often in a spreadsheet or a slide. By the end of the first quarter, leadership has re-prioritised at least once. The new priorities live in the all-hands deck and the leadership Slack channel, but nobody goes back to update the individual goals. Managers quietly work to the new plan and the old goals sit untouched until review time.

Then the year-end review asks people to be rated against goals that stopped being true months ago. Managers rebuild the year from memory, employees feel judged on work they were told to drop, and HR still can’t show the CEO how performance management helped the company hit its real priorities. That’s the gap the MIT SMR and HBR research describes: leadership thinks the priorities are clear, while the managers setting goals can’t list them.

3. 6 fixes to keep goals live when priorities move

1. Agree three outcomes with the business first. Agree with business leaders on three to five outcomes performance management should influence, with a baseline, before planning locks in. Start there, not with the review form.
2. Make company priorities the top of the goal tree. Every team goal should hang off a company priority, and every individual goal off a team goal. If a goal links to nothing, ask whether it still matters. In Revolut People: Goals cascade from company to team to individual, so each person can see which priority their work supports.
3. Trigger a goal review on events, not the calendar. Agree specific events that trigger a goal review: a strategy change, a re-org, a market shift. When one happens, check which team and individual goals it touches and update them that month. In Revolut People: because goals are linked, a change to a company or team goal shows you which goals underneath it need a look.
4. Let goals be revised, paused or retired mid-cycle. A goal that no longer fits isn’t a failure; keeping it is. Give managers permission to change goals without waiting for the next HR cycle, and keep a short note of why. In Revolut People: goal updates are kept on the goal, so the review shows what changed and when.
5. Cut manager admin before adding process. In a CEB survey reported by SHRM, managers said they already spend an average of 210 hours a year on performance management. Remove any review step that doesn’t feed a decision or a development conversation, and don’t ask managers to rebuild the year from memory.
6. Report alignment, not completion. Swap “percentage of reviews submitted” for measures such as the percentage of goals linked to current priorities, time to realign goals after a strategy change, and manager time spent on admin. Get a quick baseline with the performance health check.

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4. Where Revolut People fits, and where it doesn’t

Revolut People started as the in-house system Revolut uses to run performance. The part that maps to this research is Goals: company, team and individual goals linked in one cascade, so when the business changes direction you can see which goals are affected and update them during the year, and the review then scores the work people were actually asked to do.

To be straight about the limits: software won’t decide your priorities for you, and it won’t make a leadership team tell managers when the plan has changed. That takes a short, regular habit of checking goals against strategy, and leaders who own it. What a tool can do is make the links between goals visible and take the spreadsheet admin out of keeping them current. Related reads: goals that don’t cascade, McKinsey on goal setting, and the CIPD on closing the loop from objectives to feedback.

Bottom Line

The research says most managers can’t list their company’s priorities, and only about half of employees are clear on what’s expected of them. When priorities change and goals don’t, that gap gets wider, and it’s a big reason HR struggles to prove performance management helps the business. For a mid-market People team in the UK, Ireland, Benelux, the Nordics or the Baltics, the fix isn’t a new review form. It’s a goal tree that starts from company priorities, a rule that big changes trigger a goal check, and reporting on alignment instead of completion. Try it with one department this quarter: after the next priority change, measure how many days it takes for individual goals to catch up.

FAQ

What does the research say about goals and priorities?

In MIT Sloan Management Review research across 124 organisations (Sull, Sull and Yoder, 2018), only 28% of executives and middle managers responsible for executing strategy could list three of their company’s strategic priorities. In earlier Harvard Business Review research (Sull, Homkes and Sull, 2015), only 55% of the middle managers surveyed could name even one of their company’s top five priorities. Gallup found that in the first half of 2026, 49% of US employees strongly agreed they know what is expected of them at work.

Where does performance management break down most often?

Often before the review starts: if priorities aren’t understood, goals can’t follow them. HBR’s research found fewer than one-third of senior executives’ direct reports clearly understand the connections between corporate priorities, falling to 16% for frontline supervisors and team leaders, even though nearly 90% of middle managers believe top leaders communicate the strategy frequently enough. Gartner found less than one-fifth of HR leaders believe performance management is effective at achieving its primary objective.

Is this independent research?

Yes, in the sense that none of the sources sells performance management software: MIT Sloan Management Review, Harvard Business Review, Gallup and Gartner. They aren’t all recent: the HBR research is from 2015, the MIT SMR research from 2018 and the Gartner figure from 2019, and Gallup’s figure is for US employees. Treat them as a signal for European mid-market teams, not a controlled study. Ash works for Revolut People, which sells performance management software.

How often should goals be updated?

There’s no single rule. A practical approach is to stop tying goals only to the calendar: agree specific events that trigger a goal review, such as a strategy, structure or market change, show which team and individual goals a change affects, and let goals be revised, paused or retired without waiting for a new HR cycle.

Is Revolut People available in the UK, Ireland, Benelux, the Nordics and the Baltics?

Yes. Revolut People is available to businesses with a registered entity in the UK, the EEA or the US, which covers Ireland, the Benelux, Nordic and Baltic countries.