From Paper to People: From Strategic Vision to Organizational Fitness

Joanna Bakas
January 14, 2025

70% of strategies fail to deliver because they fail to move from paper to people.

As a result, every Monday through Friday in an organization looks something like this:

Note that this is happening in a climate that is generally considered challenging, all the time, everywhere.

The Four Fails and What You Can Do About Them:

Competition Won’t Kill You, Lack of Alignment Will

Most people can’t recall the strategy of the organization they work for. Even the executives and managers responsible for strategy struggle, with one study reporting that only 28% of them could list three strategic priorities.

To make matters worse, most top teams fail to agree among themselves on company-wide priorities. For the typical organization, just over half of senior executives converge on the same list of strategic objectives (same MIT study as above). This is not a measure of whether the team members were committed to achieving strategic priorities; it’s a measure of whether they agreed on what they were.

  • There is no silver bullet for leadership alignment. Find a way to test it (anonymous surveys).
  • Understanding that there is a problem is 90% of solving it.

Crappy Communication (there is no other way to say it):

Just because you say it, does not mean you are heard or understood and a video wall at the entrance and posters on an elevator is not internal communication

Wads of money are spent on brand advertising while announcements of a corporate strategy are a ticked-off to-do with a nod to effort. Just like ad campaigns, you want to influence behavior. Make sure your internal comms efforts are up to the task.

Find your audience, the ones that will influence the rest.

  • Create awareness, engagement, and frequency, frequency, frequency.
  • Share your story, its implications, what is new, and what you will not be doing as a result of a strategic focus.
  • Measure the effort: who knows, what do they know, what is the perception, the buy-in, and the predisposition to ‘buy’.

Luke Warm Commitment:

If the leadership is aligned and communication is well executed, then what? Business units and teams need a kickstart and ongoing support in knowing what’s next. Strategies are approved but poorly communicated and even more poorly integrated. This makes the translation of strategy into specific action all but impossible or at best painful.

People don’t know what they need to do, when they need to do it, or what resources will be required to deliver the performance.

Each key function needs support from senior management in answering the question, ‘how can our department’, business units or function play a role in delivering on the vision of management.

  • Do jump starts with key function to plan according to the question ‘how can we contribute’.
  • Put the strategic goals in the context of daily work & the contribution people can make
  • Coach on defining function goals, OKRs, resources including tech, ways of working, communication flows, and feedback loops. Systems for new strategic initiatives should be different from daily operational work.
  • Identify and eliminate serious and systemic impediments

No Traction and Visible Results:

Proof points and specific success cases need to get off the ground. Successful strategy execution is most visible in the successful execution of projects.

  • Within each function, put teams in place to manage the core business
  • Set up experimentation, agile value delivery teams
  • Differentiate KPIs for core and new revenue value creation or other strategic initiatives
  • Incentivise, support, and maintain a continuous level of retros and feedback
  • don’t tell people to be (insert desired mindset here), encourage the behavior that helps them be (insert desired mindset here)
  • Celebrate and reward successes very loudly