If Your Strategy Never Gets Delivered, This Is Why…
By Incountr
Business leaders don’t lack strategy. They lack delivery. Study after study shows that even well-crafted strategies stall before results show up on the P&L. Harvard Business Review has reported that 60–90% of strategic plans never fully launch—and the reasons are both familiar and fixable.
Below, I’ll break down the most common failure modes, the early warning signs, and the practical moves that close the strategy-to-execution gap. This piece is built for executives, change agents, and transformation stakeholders who need outcomes, not slogans.
The 7 Root Causes of Strategy Delivery Failure
1) The Strategy Doesn’t Translate Into Executable Work
A brilliant deck is not a delivery plan. When goals don’t cascade into clear initiatives, owners, and measures, teams spin. In a multi-year field study, Sull, Homkes, and Sull found that coordination and decision rights—not alignment rituals—are where execution really unravels. In fact, only about half of middle managers could name any of their company’s top five priorities, a sign that “strategy” isn’t being rendered into day-to-day work.
Make it executable: Translate strategy → outcomes → initiatives → milestones → accountabilities. Confirm that every strategic outcome is backed by a funded initiative with a single accountable owner.
2) Leadership Commitment Drifts (or Splinters)
Delivery dies when leaders model inconsistency. The research is blunt: strategy execution repeatedly ranks as CEOs’ top concern, and leadership ownership is the most reliable predictor of a transformation’s success trajectory.
Make it visible: Establish a cadence where leaders relentlessly remove blockers, make trade-offs, and protect capacity for the few initiatives that matter most.
3) Decision Rights Are Fuzzy
If no one knows who decides what, decisions ping-pong and timelines slip. The classic HBR guidance—“Who has the D?” (RAPID)—remains a delivery superpower: clarify Recommend, Agree, Perform, Input, Decide for the handful of decisions that drive 80% of value.
Make it fast: Document the D for each strategic decision (funding, sequencing, scope changes). Publish it. Use it.
4) Strategic Inertia Beats Market Change
Organizations lock into their own success formulas and struggle to pivot. HBR’s ambidextrous organization research shows that companies must exploit the core and explore new bets at the same time—or get caught flat-footed when the context shifts.
Make it adaptable: Run exploration (new growth options) and exploitation (core optimization) in distinct structures, integrated at the top so capital and talent can reallocate quickly.
5) Analysis Paralysis and Meeting-Led Cultures
You cannot analyze your way to shipped outcomes. HBR calls out a dangerous myth: execution is not “sticking to the plan”; it’s moving fast to seize opportunities while coordinating across silos. That requires timely decisions—not endless steering groups.
Make it decisive: Define decision SLAs (e.g., “tier-1 decisions within five working days”). If the D can’t decide, escalate same day.
6) The Operating Model Can’t Carry the Weight
Many strategies overrun the organization’s execution capacity—funding, talent, architecture, governance. PMI’s global research shows how weak delivery disciplines translate into wasted investment; even with improvements, organizations still burn ~5–9% of spend through poor project performance.
Make it scalable: Align funding (product/portfolio vs. annual projects), engineering cadence, data, and governance with the strategy’s real demands before the launch hype fades.
7) Culture and Incentives Reward the Wrong Things
If incentives reward local optimization or “optics over outcomes,” delivery stalls. Bain’s 2024 research found 88% of business transformations fail to achieve their original ambitions, with talent overload and capability gaps as key culprits.
Make it reinforcing: Tie rewards to leading indicators of progress (decision speed, dependency burn-down, customer adoption) and to cross-functional outcomes—not just silo KPIs.
Early Warning Signs Your Strategy Won’t Ship
Look for these “smoke signals” before fire breaks out:
Priorities multiply without capacity reallocation. (Everyone is “above the line.”)
Milestones slide month after month with no decision log explaining trade-offs.
Teams can’t articulate why this initiative matters now (or for whom).
Silo KPIs improve while customer or financial outcomes don’t.
Leaders review activities (status, RAGs) rather than results and risks.
Middle managers can’t name the top priorities—or the single owner for each.
How to Close the Strategy-to-Execution Gap
1) Convert Strategy to a One-Page “Execution Brief”
Goal: Everyone can explain the strategy in under 60 seconds and show their role in it.
Include:
North-star outcomes (business and customer)
Few, funded initiatives (with owners)
Guardrails (what we won’t do)
Decision map (the D for critical calls)
Cadence (when we review, what will change)
This counters the “only half can name the priorities” problem and sets the stage for real delegation.
2) Stand Up a Portfolio Review That Actually Reallocates
McKinsey’s work on transformation actions shows that success rates more than double when companies follow a rigorous approach that aligns actions to each stage—and completed transformations report success ~79% of the time. The common thread: systematic review, reprioritization, and resource shifts as evidence emerges.
Run a monthly (not quarterly) value review that:
Cuts or pauses work with weak signals.
Shifts funding and talent in-cycle (no waiting for next year).
Unblocks cross-team dependencies on the spot.
3) Clarify Decision Rights with RAPID (and Use Them Daily)
For each value-creating decision, document RAPID in your execution brief and in Jira/ADO/Asana descriptions. Leaders should coach to the D, not redo the analysis.
Recommend: Who proposes?
Agree: Who must concur (keep few)?
Perform: Who executes?
Input: Who provides data/insight?
Decide: Who makes the call?
The payoff is faster cycle times and fewer do-overs.
4) Design for Ambidexterity: Two Speeds, One Strategy
Don’t force innovation work through the core’s controls—or vice versa.
Explore: Small, time-boxed bets with stage-gated funding and discovery metrics.
Exploit: Larger, reliability-driven programs with scale metrics.
Integrate at the top: the ambidextrous model ensures capital and talent shift as evidence warrants.
5) Replace Meetings with Decision SLAs and Operating Rhythm
Borrow from high-velocity organizations:
Weekly ops: value at risk, top 3 cross-team blockers, decisions needed this week.
Decision SLAs: <5 business days for tier-1 calls; 24 hours for tier-2.
Asynchronous pre-reads; live time for trade-offs, not updates.
This matches HBR’s guidance that execution is seizing opportunities while coordinating across units—not rigidly “sticking to the plan.”
6) Fund Products and Value Streams, Not Orphaned Projects
A lot of “strategy failure” is budget architecture masquerading as fate. Move from 100s of project codes to persistent product/value-stream funding with outcomes you can measure quarterly.
Support with:
OKRs tied to the strategy brief
Architecture runway for change
Shared services with clear SLAs
PMI’s data shows that when organizations invest in the human and managerial disciplines behind execution, wasted investment shrinks substantially.
7) Measure What Matters: From Activity to Adoption
Track a compact set of leading indicators that predict value realization:
Customer: adoption/engagement, NPS/CSAT, time-to-value
Financial: time to first $1M in run-rate savings/growth, payback vs. plan
Flow: decision latency, dependency cycle time, % work unblocked
People: talent load on top performers (Bain flags overloading star talent as a major risk), capability gaps closed per quarter.
Practical Playbooks (Use and Adapt)
A) The 90-Day Strategy Delivery Sprint
Weeks 1–2: Execution Brief
Finalize outcomes, initiatives, RAPID, guardrails.
Weeks 3–4: Portfolio Fit & Capacity
Rebalance funding/talent; kill one initiative to prove focus.
Weeks 5–8: Remove the Top 5 Blockers
Unblock dependencies; issue 5–7 tier-1 decisions.
Weeks 9–12: Evidence Review
Present adoption and flow metrics; reallocate again.
Grounded cadence beats lofty timelines every time. McKinsey’s research indicates success rises materially when organizations follow disciplined actions through each stage of the transformation.
B) The Decision Rights Reset (30 Days)
Inventory the 10 decisions that most affect your strategy’s value.
Assign RAPID (one D only; minimize A and I).
Publish the map and embed it in charters and backlogs.
Coach to the model for a month; measure decision latency.
Expect fewer revisit cycles and faster throughput.
C) The “Ambidextrous” Blueprint
Explore lane: 3–5 discovery squads with stage-gated funding and learning metrics (e.g., problem/solution fit evidence).
Exploit lane: 2–4 scale programs focused on reliability, margin, and customer impact.
Integration: one exec forum owns reallocation between lanes.
Real-World Reality Check (What the Data Say)
Most transformations fall short. Bain’s 2024 study found 88% fail to achieve original ambitions, with overloaded top talent a prime reason. Translation: your plan is too wide for your capacity. Narrow it; protect your stars.
You can beat the odds. McKinsey reports an average success rate of ~26% across transformations; apply disciplined actions and success more than doubles—and rises to ~79% for completed programs following through.
Execution fails where coordination and decisions fail. The most powerful levers aren’t more town halls; they’re clear decision rights and information flow.
Waste is measurable. PMI’s Pulse shows persistent wasted investment tied to poor delivery disciplines, even as top performers push that waste down materially.
Your Strategy Delivery Checklist (Steal This)
Use this before you green-light anything big:
One-Page Execution Brief exists, is socialized, and every team can recite it.
5–7 Big Bets Max this year; the lowest-value one is pre-agreed to cut.
RAPID Mapped for the 10 make-or-break decisions; the D is explicit.
Monthly Portfolio Reallocation is real (money and people move mid-year).
Ambidextrous Design is in place (separate explore/exploit lanes, one integrated governance).
Decision SLAs and a weekly ops rhythm beat meetings with outcomes.
Leading Indicators tracked: adoption, time-to-value, decision latency, dependency cycle time, and top-talent load.
WIP Limits enforced; capacity is matched to ambition (no “above the line” fiction).
If you can’t tick most of these boxes, your strategy isn’t under-delivering—it’s under-designed for delivery.
Final Word: Strategy Is a Promise—Delivery Is the Proof
Strategy is the promise you make to the market. Delivery is the proof you offer—through adoption, growth, efficiency, and resilience. The gap between the two is not mysterious; it has names: unclear priorities, fuzzy decisions, inert structures, overloaded talent, and misaligned incentives.
The upside is equally clear. When leaders commit, clarify decisions, design for ambidexterity, and run a real portfolio, success rates double or better. When they don’t, the “plan” quietly becomes a museum piece.
Ship the strategy. Start with the Execution Brief, RAPID, and a monthly reallocation. Then measure what matters and keep moving.