James Hughes | Business Coach | Grow | mail me |
Leaders are often too quick to blame the strategy when a business is not making progress. This instinct is understandable because strategy is visible, discussable and relatively easy to revisit. Execution, however, is harder to interrogate. It forces a more uncomfortable question: did we actually do what we said we were going to do?
A business can spend months changing direction when it never properly executed the original plan. That is exactly what I found with John, not his real name, who had run his business for 15 years. Growth had been steady, but slower than he believed it should have been. He was convinced the strategy was wrong.
Once we unpacked the situation, however, the strategy itself proved sound. The team knew what it needed to do but failed to execute consistently. Therefore, the problem was not direction but follow-through. In practical terms, the difference is fairly simple: are you unsure what to do, or do you know what to do but simply fail to do it?
Distinguishing between strategy and execution
A strategy problem exists at the level of direction. The goal may be unclear. Alternatively, the business may have several possible paths but struggle to decide which deserves priority. The team can work hard and still make limited progress. This happens because its efforts target the wrong objectives.
Good strategy requires research, trade-offs and judgement calls. Leaders often make these decisions under considerable uncertainty about future outcomes. They must decide where the business should compete, what deserves attention and which opportunities they are prepared to leave alone.
An execution problem looks different. The team understands the direction and agrees on what it needs to do, the deadline and what ‘complete’ should look like. Yet the business still underdelivers. Teams miss deadlines, apply accountability inconsistently or lack sufficient capacity and skills. Sometimes, the plan for completing the work simply lacks the necessary structure.
This is where misdiagnosis becomes expensive. If execution presents the underlying problem, leadership teams should not respond by changing the strategy. Otherwise, the business can waste considerable time and money revisiting decisions that were not necessarily wrong in the first place.
Why leaders keep revisiting strategy
One reason this happens is that people often enjoy strategy. Setting strategy is interesting, creative and intellectually stimulating. Leadership teams can step away from daily operations, challenge assumptions, explore opportunities and consider the company’s future direction. The process has a certain appeal.
Execution is usually far less appealing. It unfolds over weeks and months, alongside everything else people must do. It requires teams to revisit the same priorities, honour commitments and have difficult conversations when things start slipping.
Consequently, owners and leaders may find it easier to decide that the business needs a new direction. This avoids the uncomfortable task of examining previous commitments and acknowledging that the team simply failed to deliver what it promised.
That does not automatically mean people are lazy or incapable. More often, businesses have not properly embedded the disciplines that support strong execution. They may have too many competing priorities, weak accountability, insufficient capacity or no consistent way to measure meaningful progress.
Before rewriting the strategy, leaders should establish whether the business genuinely needs a different direction or simply needs stronger execution. Otherwise, they risk repeating the same mistakes under a new strategic plan.
The hidden cost of poor execution
The cost of poor execution can also be easy to underestimate. This is because it does not always appear as a direct expense on an income statement.
Consider a product that does not reach the market as planned, a quality assurance system that launches six months late, or a sales strategy that the team agrees on but never properly implements. Each carries a cost. The business may have already invested time and resources. However, it delays or entirely loses the value those initiatives should have created.
When this happens across several strategic priorities, quarter after quarter, the opportunity cost can become substantial. Yet leaders do not always recognise the full impact because no single invoice captures that loss.
This is why I spend considerable time helping clients improve execution. In my experience, businesses that develop strong execution capabilities tend to make consistent progress. They learn how to turn decisions into action and strategic priorities into completed work.
The disciplines behind good execution have received extensive attention in business literature. However, I find that a few principles repeatedly emerge in practice.
Three disciplines that strengthen execution
The first is prioritisation. CEOs and business leaders almost always have a long list of strategic priorities they want their organisations to pursue. However, resources are not unlimited. The people responsible for delivering those priorities must also manage operational responsibilities.
When urgent operational work competes with important strategic work for the same person’s time, urgent work usually wins. Therefore, prioritisation requires leaders to make genuine choices about what the organisation will focus on now. They cannot treat every worthwhile idea as an immediate priority.
The second discipline is accountability. People are busy, so organisations need mechanisms that keep strategic commitments visible. Leaders should not assume that everyone will automatically hold themselves accountable while balancing multiple demands.
A regular accountability rhythm helps teams revisit priorities that might otherwise disappear beneath daily workloads. For example, teams can review progress every two weeks. During these sessions, they should ask what has moved forward, what has stalled and what needs to happen next.
The third principle is keeping score. If something genuinely qualifies as a strategic priority, the business should be able to see whether it is making progress.
Tracking agreed measures keeps priorities visible. It also makes it harder for projects to drift into an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ space. There is a reason every sport has some form of scoreboard. When people can see how they are performing, it influences how they respond. The same principle applies in business.
Before rewriting the strategy, examine execution
The ability of a CEO or business leader to develop a good strategy remains vital. However, even a sound strategy delivers little value if it remains trapped in plans, presentations and unfinished projects.
In most cases, I can confidently expect a business to make good progress if I help it achieve 80 to 90 per cent of its most important strategic goals quarter after quarter. This remains true even when the strategy itself is not perfect.
Before rewriting the strategy, leaders must understand what actually prevents progress. Sometimes, the direction needs to change because the market has shifted, assumptions have proved wrong, or the original choices were poor. In other cases, the business already knows what it needs to do. It simply needs to become much better at doing it.
Before rewriting the strategy, therefore, ask a more fundamental question: does the business have a strategy problem, or does it have an execution problem? The answer could save considerable time, resources and unnecessary strategic disruption.
