It always amused me that the most “prestigious” consulting firms positioned themselves as specialists in strategy. Because if you believe the research that says that 67% to 90% of strategies fail, that means that McBainCG are really bad at their jobs!
They’re not (and I’m not writing that just because I used to be employed by one of them).
It’s because strategy development is only the first step on the path to execution.
The problem of a “Strategy-Execution Gap” isn’t new. But it oversimplifies the issue, rendering it unsolvable.
Believing that developing and communicating is sufficient to turn it into execution, then getting mad when that doesn’t happen, establishes and “us vs. them” mentality. Conversely, receiving a strategy that feels divorced from the reality of on-the-ground resources, constraints, and operations, engenders resentment amongst the rank and file.
The answer falls somewhere between strategy development and strategy execution.
In partnership with Cascade, an AI-powered strategy execution platform, I set off to find that somewhere.
5 steps from strategy to execution
There are five pillars of a “strategically mature” company (one that consistently translates strategy into execution:
- Focus: Ability to proactively develop clear plan that anticipates trends and sets goals
- Alignment: Transparency and involvement across the organization and with external stakeholders
- Visibility: Communication of, and access to, data and insights that empower decision-making at every level
- Accountability: Ability foster ownership and commitment across teams and individuals
- Speed: Ability adapt to evolving conditions and make decisions in a timely manner
5 levels of “Strategic Maturity”
In Cascade’s Strategic Maturity Assessments, organizations are evaluated against each of these five pillars and then scored on a level of one to five, with one being the least mature and five being fully mature. Not surprisingly, most organizations fall in the middle:
- Level 2: A basic annual strategic planning process that sets defined goals but there is limited alignment with broader business objective
- Level 3: A formal strategy process produces clearly articulated goals, resources, and responsibilities and are integrated with business objectives with rudimentary measurement and success metrics
- Level 4: Strategy is fully integrated in all business functions and cross-functional teams with continuous means to ensure alignment between strategic and operational goals.
1 Glaring Gap
Everything falls apart at Alignment.
Between 63% and 67% of respondents agreed with statements indicating strong focuses on Focus (a clear plan), Visibility (access to insights), Accountability (ownership of results), and Speed (adaptability). But Alignment? That was a 10-percentage point drop.
And the news gets worse the deeper you go:
- 38% of VPs feel their organization have strong alignment compared to 66% of C-Suite executives
- Only 1 respondent (a C-suite exec) feels they have adequate resources to implement initiatives and 67% of VPs and Directors disagree that they have what they need
- 25% of C-suite execs, 17% of VPs, and 0% of Directors and Managers feel strongly there is cross-functional alignment to executing the strategy
Yikes!
Root causes for this failure were consistent across company sizes (revenue, number of employees):
- “We are a highly fragmented and siloed org that has gone through several mergers recently” (C-Suite · $10B+ · 10–50k employees)
- “Organization siloes, conflicting priorities, protecting the legacy” (VP · $1–10B · 10–50k employees)
1 glimmer of hope
The solution isn’t a better strategy or process. It’s a habit and culture of empowerment
One startup CEO explained: “It (strategy) has worked because we grounded it in culture and employees are growing and driving the change.” A director at a Fortune 500 company described the same pattern from a different angle: “We’ve built muscle and improved how we approach strategy, doing this repeatedly over the last few years.”
The highest scorers built Alignment into the process, not as data-gathering “involvement” and head-nodding but as genuine engagement, buy-in, and empowerment. Does your strategic planning process do that?
If you would like to see how your organization scores, click here to take the Strategy Maturity Assessment. Your results will be sent directly to me, not to Cascade, and you will not be added to a mailing list. Please note that some people have had trouble using Gmail and other free e-mail accounts.
Methodology note: The Strategy Maturity Assessment was designed by Cascade and administered by MileZero as a self-serve survey to a sample of MileZero’s own clients: 18 self-selected respondents from 18 different companies, varying in role, revenue, and size. Findings are directional and should not be interpreted as scientific, random, or representative sample. Scores come from a proprietary scoring of Yes / Somewhat / No answers and show relative patterns, not precise measurements. All findings are the opinions of individual participants as of the date they responded, not statements of fact.
FAQs
Why do most strategic plans fail?
Not because the strategy was wrong. Research puts strategy failure between 67% and 90%, and that’s not because those firms can’t develop a strategy. It’s because strategy development is only the first step. In Mile Zero’s Strategic Maturity data, four of five execution pillars scored strong. The one that collapsed: Alignment. That gap, not a bad plan, is where most strategies actually die.
What causes strategic decisions to stall inside a corporation?
Same root causes, regardless of company size. One executive summed it up: “We are a highly fragmented and siloed org that has gone through several mergers recently.” Another named “organization siloes, conflicting priorities, protecting the legacy.” Add in resources: 67% of VPs and Directors say they don’t have what they need to execute. Silos plus scarcity stall even a good decision.
What does a real strategy execution framework look like?
Five pillars, not one silver bullet: Focus, Alignment, Visibility, Accountability, and Speed. Cascade’s Strategic Maturity Assessment scores a company one to five on each, from a basic annual planning process with little follow-through to strategy fully built into every function and cross-functional team. Score all five pillars, and you find out exactly where execution actually breaks.
How do you overcome internal resistance to a strategy everyone already agreed to?
Not with a better deck. The highest scorers in Mile Zero’s Strategic Maturity data didn’t treat Alignment as a data-gathering exercise, checking a box for “involvement” then nodding along. They built genuine engagement, buy-in, and empowerment into the process itself. One founder put it simply: it worked because they grounded the strategy in culture, and let employees drive the change.