The problem with strategy is not one of generating ideas – it’s execution. Here’s how to stay focused on the real priorities

Have you ever been truly bad at something? So bad that you failed far more than you succeeded? Many of us have such things in our personal lives. Mine is dancing. But the thing is, I know I’m bad at dancing. By contrast, there’s a peculiar part of our professional lives where we are universally terrible, but somehow collectively convinced we’re brilliant. It is the field of strategy execution. 

Strategy is an over-utilized concept and, in my experience over a career as a management consultant and chief strategy officer, very few leaders truly understand its meaning. Most, of course, would never admit that. 

The problem with strategy is rarely a lack of good ideas; it’s the inability to turn those ideas into reality. David Norton and Robert Kaplan wrote in The Balanced Scorecard that nine out of 10 strategic initiatives fail to reach their objectives on time. Michael Mankins and Richard Steele’s research, published in the Harvard Business Review (2005) found that companies deliver, on average, only 63% of the financial outcomes promised by their strategies. This execution gap leads to a global loss of roughly $1 million every 20 seconds, according to the Project Management Institute. Such wastage has tangible consequences, including our continued inability to tackle global societal challenges effectively.

I believe that we stand at a pivotal moment. The rate of change is ever-increasing, so our inability to successfully execute is increasingly problematic. We can either accept the status quo and become passengers, or we can step up and do something about it. I would like to challenge you to critically assess your own ability to execute strategy. For those who dare: I invite you to join the Execution Revolution.

The problems behind your problem

After years of studying and applying various methodologies, I noticed three main issues consistently emerging as the primary culprits behind poor outcomes. 

First and foremost is the ability to prioritize. In the drive for success, organizations often scatter their focus, chasing every shiny new opportunity. But limited resources mean you can’t pursue every goal effectively. Each chosen project comes at the expense of another; every minute spent on one task is a minute withheld from a potentially more impactful activity. Ironically, focusing on less achieves more.

Second is the inability to align around goals throughout company hierarchies. If everyone is rowing in different directions, you’ll make the wrong kind of waves. Understanding of a company’s strategy diminishes as you move down the hierarchy. (And even top leaders may have a surprisingly poor grasp of the strategy: as Donald Sull, Charles Sull, and James Yoder put it in a 2018 MIT Sloan Management Review article, “No One Knows Your Strategy – Not Even Your Top Leaders.”) Fewer, clearer goals make it easier to align everyone, top to bottom.

The third point is more technical but equally critical: the steering systems that most companies use are not efficient in driving change. My own definition of strategy execution is, ‘Driving behavior change at scale.’ As part of that, you will need to handle resistance. This is what gets strategies killed in the real world. Contrary to popular belief, the issue isn’t a widespread lack of engagement at lower levels. It’s simpler than that.

The greatest challenge in strategy execution is the relentless pull of daily operations, consistently sidelining long-term goals. Immediate tasks and urgencies push strategic tasks to the perpetual ‘next week,’ undermining the organization’s ability to achieve its most important goals. Without a mechanism to counteract this force, pivotal improvements are perpetually deferred in favor of more pressing, but often less impactful, day-to-day demands.

A revolutionary recipe

Strategy and execution are two sides of the same coin, each meaningless without the other. Yet there is a ‘cheat code’ for a streamlined and potent methodology for successful strategy execution. It consists of just four easy-to-grasp components. Think of it as the minimalist’s guide to not messing things up.

The first two components, Most Important Goals (MIGs) and Strategic Initiatives, form the strategic part of the methodology. They answer the questions of what and how: what do you aim to achieve, and how do you aim to achieve it? The third and fourth components, Key Activities and Strategy Stand-Ups, form the execution part of the methodology. They answer the questions of what you do to focus your efforts, and how you sustain change and maintain momentum over time.

1. Most Important Goals

Exceptional execution begins with narrowing the focus. You can’t be everywhere at once. Discipline starts with the top team designating two to three MIGs; any more and you’ll drastically decrease your chances of success. Each subsequent team then identifies two to three goals that support the team above. This creates a streamlined set of goals across the company, ensuring each team
has the right focus to make progress without
losing alignment.

2. Strategic Initiatives

These enable your focused goals with the most efficient and effective tactics. These initiatives represent the ‘big bets’ that can drastically change a company’s direction and significantly influence its financial performance. To be successful, they need to go beyond incremental improvements, which typically only maintain the status quo. Such initiatives – the company’s biggest moves – account for 45% of a company’s performance (Chris Bradley, Martin Hirt, and Sven Smit, Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick: People, Probabilities, and Big Moves to Beat the Odds, 2018).

Strategic Initiatives serve as actionable pathways designed to realize MIGs and illustrate how we plan to achieve our objectives. They provide a transparent growth roadmap, pinpointing sources of performance enhancement. These initiatives make the strategy understandable for everyone, concentrating efforts and clarifying the rationale behind your strategic direction. 

3. Key Activities

These are your high-impact actions. The principle is that a small number of activities will drive the majority of your results – so it’s essential to identify these high-leverage activities and focus your efforts there. The essence of success in any endeavor lies in focusing on controllable, impactful actions. Many organizations lose sight of this, entangled in the allure of the end goal without anchoring their efforts in the activities that lead there.

Key Activities offer a way to focus efforts and resources where they are most needed, providing clear direction on pivotal actions for the team and the organization. However, this isn’t about micromanaging every minor task. That approach is impractical and counterproductive. Instead, teams should pinpoint a select number of impactful actions aligned with overarching company goals and initiatives.

These Key Activities then serve as the foundation for steering the team’s efforts and monitoring their progress toward strategic success. Activity-based steering aligns daily efforts with strategic imperatives. Each team member gains a clear understanding of their role in the grand scheme, connecting their day-to-day actions to the company’s strategic goals.

4. Strategy Stand-Ups

Fostering a culture of commitment and driving real change requires a team process that highlights successes and failures, enabling course correction and continuous improvement. These meetings create a rhythm of accountability and progress, steering the organization toward its MIGs.

Strategy Stand-Ups are short, weekly meetings (15-30 minutes). They focus exclusively on progress toward the team’s MIGs, emphasizing the Key Activities. The structure of Strategy Stand-Ups encourages transparency, accountability, and a shared commitment to collective goals. 

Although it might seem like a standard weekly check-in, it’s not. Remember that the relentless pull of operational tasks is one of the primary culprits behind poor execution. These meetings sidestep operations, cutting to the heart of where true value is created. They serve as a sanctuary from daily chaos, a dedicated time to focus solely on actions that drive strategic milestones.

Strategy execution for the 21st century

One of the difficulties of strategy is how we manage it systematically. Accenture research in 2023 suggests that 95% of the time, companies still rely on tools such as PowerPoint and Excel. There are plenty of systems for automating operational tasks, but when it comes to strategic clarity, the tools are remarkably analog. This poses a significant stumbling block.

For senior leaders, it’s incredibly hard to cut through the organizational layers, understand the true extent of progress, and get the correct information when it’s needed. From the team’s perspective, the messages from above are often incoherent and conflicting – not to mention that it’s incredibly time-consuming to compile the strategy status reports.

At the core, the problem lies in scaling strategy effectively. Digital tools for strategy execution represent a paradigm shift from traditional, analog methods to a dynamic, interactive approach. These tools enable organizations to quickly roll out strategic changes, maintain alignment across all levels, and actively steer towards goals rather than merely monitoring progress through backward-looking metrics. Unlike static presentations or spreadsheets, digital platforms offer real-time updates, collaborative features, and the ability to adjust tactics promptly based on
current performance.

These tools offer a way to raise your organizational ability to stay ahead of the constant disruptions, and enable you to react and reprioritize within your strategy. Their potential, however, remains limited by the level of digital maturity within the C-suite. The cost of lagging is high, yet in many senior teams digital understanding is just too low (see Peter Weill, Stephanie L Woerner and Aman M Shah, ‘Does Your C-Suite Have Enough Digital Smarts?’, MIT Sloan Management Review, 2021). It’s not necessary to master every new gadget or app, but you do need to understand how digital tools can amplify your strategy by giving it scalability. If you’re dragging your feet on this, wake up. The longer you resist, the harder it will be to catch up – and catching up is always far harder than keeping pace.

Revolution, now

Strategy relies on the voluntary contribution of your entire organization. No matter who you are, you can’t execute it alone. Yet by committing to the straightforward methodology outlined here, you have the opportunity to spark an Execution Revolution and drive meaningful change – while positioning yourself as a leader of tomorrow, adept at navigating and thriving in our dynamic world.

The more who join the crusade for change, the stronger our impact will be. Step up, take charge, and lead the way. Join the Execution Revolution and let’s transform our world together.