A strategy works when it makes clear choices, directs people and resources toward them, and changes when evidence or conditions demand it. That takes more than a polished plan: executives must connect priorities to budgets, operations, accountability, measures, and regular review. The practical test is whether the organization can explain what it will focus on, what it will deprioritize, and how leaders will know whether the choices are paying off.
How do you make a strategy actually work?
Treat strategy as both a set of choices and an ongoing management process. A statement of ambition—such as “grow faster” or “become more innovative”—is not yet a strategy. Leaders need to specify where the organization will focus, how it expects to succeed there, and which assumptions must hold for those choices to work.
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1. Make the choices explicit
Describe the customers, markets, products, capabilities, or problems that will receive priority. State what the organization will not pursue, or will pursue less aggressively, so that the strategy creates real trade-offs. List the key assumptions behind the choices—for example, a customer need, a cost advantage, or a capability the organization expects to build—and identify what evidence would challenge them.
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2. Turn priorities into operating and resource decisions
For each priority, specify the operational changes, people, capabilities, budget, and decision rights required to carry it out. Make the connection visible in planning and budgeting rather than expecting teams to infer it from a strategy presentation. Identify work that will stop, shrink, or wait; without those trade-offs, new priorities can become additions to an already full workload.
- Operations: What processes, products, or ways of serving customers must change?
- Resources: Which budget, roles, skills, and capacity must shift to support the priority?
- Ownership: Who is accountable for progress, and who can make decisions when units disagree?
- Trade-offs: Which existing activities will receive fewer resources or less attention?
3. Align teams and communicate the strategy
Executives are responsible for making enterprise priorities understandable across business units and functions. Teams should be able to see how their plans contribute, where they have latitude, and which local goals must give way when they conflict with organizational choices. Communication is not just announcing the strategy; it also means resolving cross-unit disputes and reinforcing priorities through decisions, incentives, and resource allocation.
Leadership involvement should continue after planning. Kaplan’s interview about the Balanced Scorecard approach emphasizes engaged executive leadership and a willingness to challenge strategy when conditions or performance evidence change; this is guidance from the authors’ experience and framework, not a universal causal guarantee (Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, Robert Kaplan interview).
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Repair common Windows errors and clear accumulated junk for a smoother, more stable PC - no reinstall needed.Free scan · no reinstallWhat should executives measure?
Measure both the outcomes the strategy is meant to produce and the drivers expected to produce them. Financial results matter, but they can arrive too late to show whether customers, operations, or capabilities are moving in the intended direction. Kaplan and Norton write, “What you measure is what you get,” arguing that measurement systems influence behavior; they caution that measures such as ROI and earnings per share can mislead when the strategy depends on innovation and continuous improvement (Harvard Business Review, “The Balanced Scorecard—Measures That Drive Performance,” 2005).
The Balanced Scorecard is one way to represent multiple elements of a strategy rather than relying on financial measures alone. Its usefulness depends on choosing measures that reflect the organization’s actual strategy and intended behaviors; adopting the framework by itself does not guarantee execution (Harvard Business Review, “Using the Balanced Scorecard as a Strategic Management System,” 1996).
| Measure type | What it can show | Example question |
|---|---|---|
| Financial outcomes | Whether the strategy is producing economic results | Are revenue, margins, or returns moving in the intended direction? |
| Customer outcomes | Whether the intended customers are responding as expected | Are target customers adopting, staying, or choosing the offer? |
| Operational drivers | Whether the processes needed for delivery are improving | Are quality, speed, reliability, or cost changing as the strategy requires? |
| Learning and capability | Whether the organization is building capabilities the strategy depends on | Are critical skills, systems, or innovation practices developing? |
For each measure, clarify its owner, review interval, baseline, target, and the decision it can inform. A long list of metrics is not a substitute for a small, interpretable set tied to strategic choices. Measures should help leaders see whether execution is on track and whether the underlying assumptions still make sense.
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- Managing time
- Choosing what to contribute to the organization
- Knowing where and how to mobilize strength for best effect
- Setting the right priorities
- Knitting all of them together with effective decision-making
How should leaders review progress and adapt?
Set a regular review cadence that brings together results, operational barriers, resource needs, and changes in the external environment. Use reviews to decide what to continue, unblock, adjust, or stop—not merely to report status. The Execution Premium system described by Harvard Business School links strategy development with planning, implementation, monitoring, learning, and adaptation (Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, “Creating the Office of Strategy Management”).
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- Surface barriers: Ask what is preventing teams from acting—conflicting targets, missing capabilities, delayed decisions, or insufficient resources.
- Test assumptions: Check whether the customer, market, operating, or capability assumptions behind the choices remain credible.
- Make a decision: Redirect resources, resolve ownership or coordination issues, change an initiative, or revise a strategic choice when warranted.
- Communicate the change: Explain what is changing, what is not, and how teams should alter their plans.
Adaptation is not a sign that strategy has failed. It is part of managing strategy under changing conditions. McKinsey describes mobilization as translating choices into organizational readiness and includes testing and adaptation as part of execution (McKinsey, “The strategy execution imperative”).
Why do strategies fail during execution?
A disappointing result can come from a flawed strategy, disconnected execution, or both. Treating every miss as an execution problem can preserve choices that no longer make sense; blaming the plan alone can excuse failures to align budgets, incentives, teams, and leadership attention.
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In a 2017 Harvard Business Review article, Michael Mankins reported a Bain executive estimate that 40% of strategy’s potential value was lost through execution breakdowns. He also cautioned that the gap is often related to flawed plans from the outset, so the figure is not a universal or current failure rate (Harvard Business Review, “Why Strategy Execution Unravels—and What to Do About It,” 2017).
Older studies also illustrate how results depend on definitions and samples. Harvard Business School Working Knowledge reported in 2006 on a Bain study of 1,854 large corporations across eight industrialized countries over 1988–1998: seven out of eight did not achieve “profitable growth,” defined in the interview as 5.5% annual real growth in revenue and earnings with returns exceeding the cost of capital. The interview also said more than 90% had detailed strategic plans with higher targets. This is a dated, attributed study result, not a present-day rate for all organizations (Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, 2006).
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A separate 2017 PwC Strategy& global survey of 700 executives, reported in Harvard Business Review, found that 8% of company leaders were said to excel at both strategy and execution. It is a survey result, not a universal base rate (Harvard Business Review, “Only 8% of Leaders Are Good at Both Strategy and Execution,” 2017). These figures use different populations and definitions and should not be combined into one estimate of strategy failure.
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Diagnose the actual gap
- Were the strategic choices clear and based on assumptions that still hold?
- Did operating plans, budgets, staffing, and incentives reflect the stated priorities?
- Could teams make necessary decisions, or were conflicts and dependencies left unresolved?
- Did the measures encourage the behaviors and capabilities the strategy requires?
- Did leaders review progress, remove barriers, and change direction when evidence warranted it?
Which strategy framework should an organization use?
Choose a management system by the work it helps leaders do, not by the framework’s name. The cited sources describe the Balanced Scorecard and an Office of Strategy Management as approaches, but they do not establish a controlled head-to-head comparison or a universally best framework.
| Approach | What the cited sources describe | Best fit question |
|---|---|---|
| Balanced Scorecard | A measurement approach intended to reflect strategy and shape the behaviors needed to deliver it; financial measures alone may give misleading signals about innovation and continuous improvement (Harvard Business Review, 2005; Harvard Business Review, 1996). | Does the organization need a clearer view of strategic drivers and outcomes beyond near-term financial performance? |
| Office of Strategy Management | A central coordinating role that can connect strategy formulation, alignment, planning, and execution; it is an organizational option, not a requirement for every company (Harvard Business School Working Knowledge). | Are strategy processes fragmented across units and functions, with no clear coordination or follow-through? |
| Execution Premium system | A system described by Harvard Business School as linking strategy development, planning, implementation, monitoring, learning, and adaptation (Harvard Business School Working Knowledge). | Does the organization need an integrated cycle from strategic choices through review and adaptation? |
Whichever approach is used, assess whether it clarifies choices and assumptions, connects them to operations and resources, aligns units, assigns ownership, tracks relevant drivers and outcomes, exposes barriers promptly, and supports learning and adaptation. A framework is useful only insofar as it strengthens those management practices.
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