Strategy
Why Good Strategies Still Fail to Land
Most leadership teams put a great deal of thought into strategy. The difficulty often starts after those decisions have been made.
Most leadership teams put a great deal of thought into strategy. They consider where the organisation needs to go, what is happening in the market, where customers are heading, what competitors are doing and which priorities should shape the next few years.
The difficulty often starts after those decisions have been made.
We have worked with leadership teams for more than 25 years and one of the things we have seen repeatedly is that the people who create a strategy usually understand it far better than everyone else. That makes sense. They have been involved in the conversations, heard the arguments, considered the alternatives and understand why certain choices were made.
By the time the strategy reaches the wider organisation, much of that context has disappeared. Employees may see a presentation, managers receive a set of priorities and new objectives are introduced, but that does not necessarily mean people understand what they should do differently as a result.
The difficult bit is translation
Imagine that improving customer retention becomes one of an organisation's three strategic priorities.
The senior team understands why because they have seen the customer data and discussed the commercial implications. The more important question is whether everybody else understands what improving customer retention means for them.
Does it change how the sales team manages customers? Does operations need to work differently? Should customer service make different decisions? Are managers expected to pay attention to different things? Perhaps most importantly, what should the organisation stop doing because something else has now become more important?
If those questions are left unanswered, people have little choice but to interpret the strategy themselves. Different teams then reach different conclusions, and what appeared perfectly clear in the boardroom becomes much less consistent across the organisation.
Managers are a crucial part of the connection
Managers occupy a difficult position because they receive organisational priorities from above while being expected to turn them into meaningful activity for the people they lead.
A capable manager should be able to take a broad strategic priority and explain what it means for their team. They need to establish priorities, make decisions, set expectations and challenge work that no longer contributes to what the organisation is trying to achieve.
This is why we have always seen management capability as closely connected to strategy execution. If managers cannot translate the strategy into everyday decisions and conversations, another presentation from the senior team is unlikely to solve the problem.
Strategy also means deciding what matters less
Another issue we regularly encounter is that organisations introduce new strategic priorities without removing any of the old ones.
Existing projects continue, departmental objectives remain, new initiatives are added and managers find themselves trying to accommodate everything. Before long, the organisation is describing three things as strategically important while expecting people to deliver another dozen priorities alongside them.
Making a strategic choice should have consequences. If something has genuinely become more important, leaders should be prepared to decide what can receive less attention, be postponed or stop altogether.
Without those choices, people naturally concentrate on whatever feels most urgent or most likely to attract immediate attention.
Can people see themselves in the strategy?
One of the simplest questions we ask is:
“What does the strategy mean for your role?”
People do not need to memorise a strategy document or repeat corporate language. They do, however, need enough understanding to make sensible decisions about their work.
If employees cannot explain how their priorities connect with what the organisation is trying to achieve, there is probably still a gap between strategic intent and execution.
The same principle applies in the opposite direction. Once people begin implementing a strategy, they learn things that were impossible to see when it was being developed. Customers react, competitors change, practical problems emerge and assumptions are tested.
Good strategy execution therefore involves a conversation in both directions. Leaders provide direction, managers help translate it, people act and the organisation learns from what happens.
A useful test for leadership teams
Rather than asking whether the strategy has been communicated, we think there are better questions to ask.
Can managers explain the strategy in their own words? Do employees understand what it changes about their priorities? Has anything genuinely been stopped or deprioritised because of it? Are managers connecting everyday performance conversations with the organisation's direction? Is information coming back from the people putting the strategy into practice?
The answers provide a much better indication of whether a strategy has travelled beyond the leadership team.
Our perspective
Strategy rarely fails because nobody created enough slides to explain it.
It usually becomes real through hundreds of smaller decisions, conversations and behaviours taking place throughout an organisation.
For us, that means the job isn't finished when the strategy has been agreed. The more difficult task is creating an organisation capable of turning it into sustained performance.