Most agency work that misses the mark is not an agency failure. It is a briefing failure. Score your executing team across six alignment dimensions to find out if they have the strategic foundation they need.
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Agency and team alignment is whether the people who execute your plan, in-house or agency, actually have the strategic foundation they need to do it. This free diagnostic rates your executing team across six dimensions, then tells you whether they are equipped to brief and deliver against your goal and strategy, or where the foundation is missing before work begins.
Why alignment fails
When an agency or internal team produces work that does not hit the strategic mark, the instinct is to evaluate the work. The more productive question is to evaluate the brief. What strategic context did the executing team actually receive, and when did they receive it?
This diagnostic scores six dimensions of alignment: whether the team was brought in at the right stage, whether they have complete access to the Goal and Strategy, whether they can trace each tactic back to a strategic decision, whether they understand the GTM motion and its rationale, whether they know the execution constraints your infrastructure creates, and whether they received a complete written brief. Each gap is a point where the work is being done well against the wrong foundation.
Score your alignment
Select the level that best describes the strategic context your agency or internal team was given. Score honestly against what was actually shared, not what you intended to share. Results appear immediately. No email required to see your score.
At what point in the G-STIC planning process was the executing team first engaged? Earlier engagement produces fundamentally different work than late-stage tactical handoff.
Does the executing team have documented access to the complete G-STIC Goal (all four required components): Focus, Benchmark, Demand Source, and Persuasion Task?
Can each tactic the executing team is working on be traced back to a specific Goal component or Strategy component? Traceability is the test of whether execution is connected to strategy or simply competent activity.
Has the executing team been briefed on the specific GTM motion selected (Inbound, Outbound, Product-Led, Channel/Partner, Community, or ABM) and the rationale for choosing it?
Does the executing team understand the lifecycle execution constraints that determine what is actually feasible with your current CRM, automation, and customer data infrastructure?
Is there a written brief the executing team received that contains all required strategic inputs? A verbal briefing is not a brief. What was written down is what the team has to work from.
Score all 6 dimensions to see your results. 0 of 6 complete.
Step 16 turns your aligned plan into a creative brief.
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Copy your return link to pick up where you left off from any device.FAQ
When a team is briefed after tactics are already selected, they are being asked to execute decisions they had no part in forming and may not be able to validate. The G-STIC sequence requires that the executing team understand the Goal before they can evaluate whether a Strategy is sound, and understand the Strategy before they can evaluate whether specific Tactics are the right ones. Briefing too late produces competent work on the wrong foundation.
A complete G-STIC Goal contains four components: Focus (the specific metric being moved), Benchmark (the scientific reference point that defines what level of change is ambitious but achievable), Demand Source (who the growth will come from: new category entrants, current customers, or competitor customers), and Persuasion Task (the specific belief change required in that demand source to deliver the goal). Missing any component leaves the executing team guessing at the brief.
This diagnostic evaluates the relationship and process, specifically whether the right strategic foundation was shared at the right time. Step 16, the Project Brief Evaluator, evaluates the quality of a specific written brief against the G-STIC rubric. This diagnostic comes first: it reveals whether the conditions for a high-quality brief even exist before a specific project begins.
The client or internal marketing lead should complete this diagnostic. It evaluates what strategic context was shared with the executing team, which only the client side can accurately assess. Agencies frequently score themselves higher on alignment because they are unaware of what they were not given.
A high alignment score confirms the strategic foundation was properly shared. It does not evaluate the quality of the strategy itself, the executional capability of the team, or whether the brief produced high-quality work. Those are separate evaluations. This diagnostic answers one question: did the team have what they needed to do strategic work?
Run it before a new agency engagement or significant project begins. Run it again when delivered work consistently misses the strategic mark, when there is recurring misalignment between what was asked for and what was delivered, or when a new team member takes over the client-side relationship and needs to audit the briefing process they inherited.