Megatrends and strategy execution (#3): 9 reasons why strategy execution often fails

This is the second article of the series of posts by strategy execution expert Jeroen De Flander. Given his first-hand experience in assisting companies in implementing strategies, Jeroen is very well placed to see why and how good strategies sometimes lead to poor results due to ineffective implementation. In this post, he highlights 9 primary reasons why companies fail at strategy execution.

(guest post by Jeroen De Flander)


The Strategy Execution process is your highway to performance. To be more precise, you should picture your Strategy Execution process not as a single street but as a network of unique roads – smaller and larger ones –all interlinked together. And the roads carry names like ‘strategy review process’, ‘initiative management process’, ‘coaching process’, ‘individual objective setting process’ and so on. And all of these processes, and the interaction between them, are vital to your execution success.


Some facts & figures

Here are 2 striking results. Almost 20 percent of all managers – the key people involved – cannot explain the implementation process and 25 percent believe that their execution job is made more difficult due to the complexity of the processes.

To join the Strategy Execution elite – the best-in-class – organisations need to overcome the following 9 bottlenecks:

There is too much complexity.

Managers don’t understand the process.

Clear ownership is lacking.

The process and improvement actions are not visible on the executive radar.

Managers fear proposing, and making, changes.

The process isn’t adapted to the needs of the organisation.

The quality of the process isn’t measured.

One part of the process gets all of the attention, and others none.

It’s too expensive