The alignment gap
The problem usually is not the program. It is the gap between what leadership says, what the organization actually does, and who gets rewarded. Your strongest people read that gap before anyone else does, and they act on it. Closing it is what I do.
Mastercard/Nike/Starbucks/Capital One/Vanderbilt/Dollar General/Bridgestone/Buffer
Does this sound like your organization
If you recognized more than two of these, you are not looking at eight separate problems. You are looking at one gap showing up in eight places.
What is actually happening
I recently asked a burned-out manager what her company's top priority was. She rattled off three strategic pillars from the last all-hands. Then I asked what she had actually worked on that week. Completely different list. Finally I asked who got promoted last quarter. Someone who excelled at none of the above.
That is the misalignment trap, and it is costing organizations their best talent, their culture, and their strategy. It rarely shows up as a single bad decision. It shows up as a slow, quiet gap between the words on the wall and the behavior that actually gets people ahead. Your people are not confused by that gap. They read it correctly, and then they respond to it rationally.
The framework
Each pillar has its own failure modes. Each one is fixable. The work is finding which of the three is actually broken in your organization, because treating the wrong one is how culture budgets disappear.
Every leader articulates organizational goals and how each employee's work connects to them. Clarity starts at the top.
Work processes, daily decisions, and management behavior have to actively support stated priorities rather than quietly undermine them.
Promotions, compensation, recognition, and hiring decisions have to reflect the values and priorities leadership claims to hold.
Most organizations look like the top. The work is getting to the bottom.
The goal is not to think and act alike. It's to think and act together.Christy Pruitt-Haynes, SPHR
Case study
The organization was losing employees with five or more years of tenure at a rate it could not sustain. These were the people who held the institutional knowledge, trained the newer staff, and carried the relationships. Replacing them was slow and expensive, and the pattern was accelerating.
Long-tenured employees believed their careers had stalled. Three causes sat underneath that belief:
Rebuilt the performance management system and the compensation system together, so what the organization paid for matched what it said it valued. The Say-Do-Reward Framework was used to test every design decision against that alignment. The rollout ran as a full change management process built on ADKAR principles, so the new behavior would hold after the project ended rather than reverting once attention moved on.
The two systems that most often work against each other, performance and pay, were rebuilt to work together. That is the whole mechanism.
Across other engagements
Documented outcomes from Fortune 500 client engagements.
Figures reflect results from individual client engagements. Double-digit improvements in retention and engagement have been recorded across multiple clients.
Diagnostic tool
The Say-Do-Reward Culture Assessment gives your organization a data-driven read on where the three pillars hold and where they break. It is grounded in research from Gallup, O.C. Tanner, Harvard, and SHRM.
Every assessment is customized to your industry and to the questions you are actually trying to answer, so the results reflect the specific realities of your business rather than a generic benchmark. You get a scored picture of each pillar, the factors driving each score, and a prioritized set of fixes ordered by what will move first.
Request the assessmentHow we work together
Every engagement is built around the problem you actually have, not a menu you pick from. The first conversation is diagnostic. What comes after it depends entirely on what that conversation surfaces.
Your symptom and your cause are usually in different places. We start by locating which of the three pillars is actually broken before anyone proposes a solution.
Your industry, your size, your regulatory environment, and what you have already tried all shape the plan. Approaches that worked elsewhere get adapted, not copied.
Change management is designed in from the start, not added at the end, so the alignment survives after the engagement closes.
Diagnose and fix the say-do-reward gaps that create confusion and underperformance.
Rebuild the systems that decide who gets ahead so they reward what you say you value.
Build inclusive, high-performance cultures where people actually thrive.
Equip leaders with neuroscience-backed skills for the challenges in front of them.
One-on-one partnership to raise C-suite and senior leader effectiveness.
Custom content built and delivered to change how people perform.
About
Nashville, Tennessee
Christy Pruitt-Haynes is a strategic HR executive, TEDx speaker, and organizational consultant with more than 25 years of experience transforming how companies align leadership, culture, and performance.
She has served Fortune 500 clients including Mastercard, Nike, Starbucks, Capital One, and Vanderbilt, and held senior roles at the NeuroLeadership Institute, INFINITI Americas, MTV Networks/Viacom, and the Memphis Grizzlies. She brings the strategic rigor of a C-suite partner and the credibility of someone who has run these problems from the inside.
Featured in Forbes / Harvard Business Review / CNN Business / Fast Company / Business Insider
Mastercard/Nike/Starbucks/Capital One/Vanderbilt/Dollar General/Bridgestone/Buffer
Common questions
It is an organizational alignment system built on three pillars: what leadership says, what the organization actually does, and who and what gets rewarded. When those three fall out of sync, employees follow the reward, not the message. The framework locates where the gap sits and what closes it.
Mid-size to Fortune 500 organizations where the strategy is clear on paper but is not showing up in behavior. The usual entry point is a CHRO, a CEO, or a head of talent who is watching strong people leave and cannot fully explain why.
All of it. The assessment instrument is built for your industry and your questions. The engagement is scoped to what the diagnosis actually finds. Two organizations with identical symptoms often need different work, because the pillar that is broken is not the same one.
Your employees respond to a structured instrument that scores each of the three pillars and the factors underneath them. You receive scored results by pillar, the drivers behind each score, and a prioritized action plan ordered by what will move first.
Individual responses are confidential and results are reported in aggregate. Data handling, retention, and any agreements your legal or IT team requires are settled before the assessment is fielded, not after. Bring your requirements to the first conversation.
Engagements are scoped to the problem rather than to a fixed package. Some start with the assessment and move into system redesign. Others start with leadership development or executive coaching. Change management is built in from the beginning so the work holds after it ends.
Use the form below, or email Christy@ChristyPruitt-Haynes.com, or call (615) 212-5263. The first conversation is about what is actually going wrong in your organization.
Get started
Tell me what you are seeing. The first conversation is about your situation, not a proposal.