Strategy, execution, success
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Great strategy without disciplined execution is just wishful thinking. Most leadership teams don’t fail because they lack vision; they fail because of ineffective strategy execution. Research supports this persistent gap: according to Harvard Business Review, 67% of strategies fail, and research by Kaplan and Norton shows that up to 90% of strategic plans aren’t executed successfully.
Creating a great strategy is the easy part. Executing it is hard. Leaders know that strategy execution determines success, but most leadership teams and organizations still struggle to deliver. Research confirms this persistent gap between strategy and results:
- Only 27% of employees have access to the organization’s strategic plan.
- 71% say leaders fail to communicate priorities effectively.
- 54% of organizations achieve less than half of their strategic objectives.
- Just 2% of leaders believe they’ll achieve 80–100% of their goals.
- And a staggering 95% of employees don’t understand their company’s strategy.
Most organizations invest significant effort in developing thoughtful strategic plans for board approval. But once the plan is approved, focus tends to fade, and the urgent issues of the day take up all the leadership team’s time and attention.
Lack of execution is a major mistake because it doesn’t just stall progress toward strategic goals; it actively weakens performance, culture, and credibility. Through my work with leadership teams across industries, I’ve identified the following five leadership disciplines that turn strategic goals into measurable results.
1. Distinguish Strategic Work from Operational Work
The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent. Dwight D. Eisenhower
Operational fires feel urgent and visible; strategic work feels important but quiet. A helpful way for leaders to assess how to focus their time and energy is through the lens of In and On the Business, a concept popularized by Michael E. Gerber in his book The E-Myth Revisited.
On vs. In the business
Tony Gambill
Most leadership teams spend too much time working “in the business” instead of working “on the business”. Both of these types of work are equally important to an organization’s success, but urgent issues will always demand attention, so leadership teams must build intentional structure and time for strategic goals. Without it, the urgent will always crowd out the important.
PRO TIP: Protect time for strategy. Hold recurring leadership meetings focused solely on strategic priorities. Treat this time as sacred, not optional. Build a consistent rhythm and process:
- Same day. Same time. Same agenda.
- Use every meeting to review progress, solve problems, and reinforce accountability.
- Keep the focus on strategic progress, not routine updates.
2. Focus on Fewer, More Impactful Strategic Goals
If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.
Once leaders reclaim time for strategic work, the next challenge is choosing what truly matters most. Leadership teams often say yes to too many initiatives, spreading resources thin and leaving everyone exhausted. The best leaders are disciplined in saying no to the good so they can say yes to the great activities that will have the most impact in moving the mission forward.
The challenge is that every leader in the room feels their projects, initiatives and opportunities should be listed within the fewest, most important strategic goals. Because people want to “play nice,” they end up with too many priorities. The following criteria should be vetted and discussed when assessing and deciding on the fewest, most important strategic goals.
- Requires multiple departments/functions to do significant work for success.
- Failure to meet this goal will significantly impact future success.
- This goal requires authority, oversight and resource prioritization of the leadership team for success.
PRO TIP: Limit your organization to three to four enterprise-level strategic goals. Clarity and focus ensure organizations have the time and resources to achieve their strategic goals.
3. Simple, Visible Strategy Scorecard
What gets measured gets done.
Even with clear priorities, strategy fails without clear metrics. People play differently when we keep score. Without a shared scorecard, teams can’t tell whether they’re winning or losing. A visible, up-to-date scorecard connects strategy to measurable progress and keeps everyone focused on outcomes, not activity.
Effective scorecards track two types of metrics:
- Strategic Goals measure culture, growth, partnerships, innovation, and efficiency.
- Organizational Health Metrics measure people, finances, learning, and operations (usually no more than 5–12 metrics).
PRO TIP: Keep your scorecard simple, visible, and up to date. Review it at every leadership meeting, share it with employees and the board. Visibility drives connection, alignment, clarity and accountability.
4. Clarify Governance Structure and Accountability
A great plan means little without a governance system that ensures clarity, accountability and follow-through.
Governance is the operating system that defines who makes decisions, how progress is monitored, and how adjustments are made. Without it, leadership teams fall into the “everyone is responsible, so no one is accountable” trap.
A clear governance framework defines:
- Who owns each strategic priority?
- Who approves changes or reallocations?
- How are cross-functional issues resolved?
See the draft strategic plan governance roles and responsibilities chart below:
Strategic Plan Governance
Tony Gambill
PRO TIP: Create a role for strategic coordination of the strategic plan. Empower this role to maintain dashboards, chase updates, and keep strategy visible across the organization. This important role serves as the connective tissue between leadership and implementation teams.
5. Reassess Strategic Goals to Stay Agile
It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.
Charles Darwin
Governance creates accountability, but agility keeps strategy alive as conditions continuously change. Too many organizations treat strategy as fixed until the next formal planning cycle. But in a rapidly changing environment, strategy must be dynamic and constantly evolving.
Great leadership teams regularly pause to ask the following questions:
- What’s changed with our external environment?
- What’s changed with our internal environment
- What have we learned?
- Which priorities need to shift to best serve our mission?
PRO TIP: Schedule quarterly reflection sessions to evaluate progress and adjust direction. Flexibility isn’t inconsistent; it enables an organization’s strategy to remain relevant within a constantly changing world.
Strategy Isn’t the Problem – Execution Is
The difference between great and average leadership teams isn’t their ability to create a great strategy; it’s how effectively they execute on that strategy. Success depends less on the brilliance of the strategic plan and more on how effectively leadership teams establish an environment that supports turning strategic goals into results.
The organizations that win are the ones that focus relentlessly on strategic execution by building habits of accountability and turning strategy into a living, breathing discipline and not a one-time event. How is your leadership team ensuring your strategy doesn’t become another unexecuted plan?
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