Integrating Strategy Delivery

There is much research, and plenty of evidence from our own event reports that strategy delivery is not easy and not done well. From the agreement of purpose, to the building of a vision, communication of direction, to the cascade of objectives, the integration of bottom up innovation, prioritisation between BAU, value creation and change, defining and using metrics to manage progress, lack of support to operate the process, lack of information and data to underpin it.

Where do you get help?

In previous sessions we have collaborated with

• the Good Governance Academy, we have signposted ISO 37000 and PAS 808 to support us with Governance of Organisations and Purpose Driven Organisations.
• the APM and PMI on events connecting purpose and strategy to projects
• the AIPMM and the PMI on the relationship of product management to strategy and integrated governance

On the 26th November, we collaborated with the International Association for Strategy Professionals – to take a strategist view in Integrating Strategy Delivery. This blog provides an event report and links to further insights and help.

Speakers

Char and host – David Dunning

David Booth and David Worsley from the International Association of Strategy Professionals. David B is author of Strategy Journeys, David W is Rail Strategy Manager at Transport for the North.

More about the IUK Branch of the IASP here.

The Strategist Perspective

David Booth opened by contrasting the traditional approach to strategy with the way organisations actually work today. He described the classic ‘planning school’: a top-down, linear process that produced a five-year strategic plan, cascaded into projects and RAG-tracked by boards. In reality, he argued, strategies drift, external events intervene, and what is ultimately delivered rarely resembles the original intent. Recognising this gap between plan and reality is essential.

He highlighted a second recurring problem: organisations lose energy once the excitement of strategy formulation fades. Early momentum gives way to business-as-usual pressures, operational priorities, and leadership attention moving elsewhere. The organisation’s ability to sustain strategic focus weakens long before the strategy is delivered.

David then described how thinking around strategy has evolved, shifting from one-off plan creation towards the ongoing management of strategy. This includes stronger feedback loops, more involvement of people across the organisation, and a growing interest in approaches like open strategy. He argued that we are now entering a phase focused on building dynamic strategic capabilities – the ability to respond to uncertainty, recognise emerging strategies, and adjust direction as conditions change. 

Within this organisations need to consider not just their strategy capabilities, but how they consider the future, their ability to adapt, and cultivating a learning culture to support this.

He introduced the International Association for Strategy Professionals (IASP) and its Body of Knowledge (BoK), explaining its structure and the five domains it covers: formulation, transformation, execution, engagement, and governance. It details methods, tools, and techniques for strategic practice.

He presented a comparison of this with the BIG BoK from perplexity.ai, showing the IASP BoK as strong on tools and methods for strategy work, while the BIG BoK focuses on the orchestration of strategy delivery across the organisation – governance, accountability, information flows, and integrating business-as-usual with change activity, offering the connecting architecture but is less prescriptive about strategy tools. (Editor’s note – the BIG BoK has no strategy tools and defers to sources of wisdom like the IASP BoK.)

David stressed that the two are not in competition: they are complementary reference frameworks that organisations can draw from depending on their situation. The important point is context: every organisation is different, and capability development is a journey. The value lies in using these frameworks to prompt conversations about how strategy actually flows through an organisation and how that flow can be strengthened.

In the closing discussion, David Dunning observed that most organisations have no clear owner for supporting the linkage strategy to delivery. David Booth stated that “infrastructure” should not mean something static; strategy flow needs flexible conduits, not rigid structures. He stressed the importance of framing strategy in a way that includes both change initiatives and business-as-usual work, so people understand how their day-to-day activity contributes to strategic direction. He also linked the idea of dynamic strategy to organisational agility: the ability to change direction with intelligence and purpose, rather than rely on fixed plans.

Some Quotes:

“The IASP BoK offers a stepwise approach to strategy, giving structured tools and practical templates for some of the techniques that you would use”

“The BIG BoK is valuable in helping organizations to understand how they can set up the infrastructure for that flow to occur, offering a systematic approach to integrating your governance, your accountability, your information flows, your support structures”

In summary:

“The IASP BoK provides a robust approach and the tools for strategy. BIG Bok is more about the governance, the accountability, and the information flows. Drawing on both, an organization can improve its ability to develop and manage its strategy, but also to set up the infrastructure, the flows, and the relationships to help manage that strategy and its delivery.”

Example for Discussion – the Rail Industry

David Worsley used the past 25 years of the British rail industry to show how structural choices, unclear accountability and weak information flow shape strategy delivery.

He began with Railtrack, the post-privatisation infrastructure company. Its business model depended on outsourcing almost everything that mattered: maintenance, renewals, enhancements, and much of the technical thinking. As a result, it became what business historians later described as an uninformed buyer of its own engineering. It assumed that strategic direction would come from government or customers who would simply pay for improvements. In effect, Railtrack abdicated strategic responsibility.

Safety failures exposed the consequences. After Southall (1997) and, more dramatically, Hatfield (2000), the company admitted it had no clear picture of the scale of broken-rail risk. The network slowed to a crawl, costs soared, and leadership churned. These failures reflected not just operational weaknesses but a complete diffusion of accountability.

Its approach to investment was also troubling. Railtrack treated major programmes as extensions of the outsourcing model. The West Coast Route Modernisation became the emblem of this: costs spiralled from under £2 billion to more than £14 billion, while progress lagged far behind spend. This loss of control over both safety and cost contributed directly to Railtrack being replaced by Network Rail in 2002.

Network Rail brought more discipline but inherited large structural problems and high public subsidy. It also operated in a system where the Department for Transport, not the rail industry, set most strategic direction. Nevertheless, Network Rail began reintroducing strategic thinking: clearer project definition, value management, project reviews, and a stronger focus on purpose before delivery. Worsley noted the simple truth that a well-defined project, even if imperfectly executed, generally creates more value than a poorly defined one delivered efficiently.

From around 2007, he moved into strategic planning, where the dominant model was predict-and-provide: forecast demand and specify infrastructure accordingly. To counter the limits of long-range forecasting, the organisation adopted scenario planning. He described four scenarios based on economic geography and sustainability, noting how quickly assumptions were overturned by events such as Brexit and COVID.

He then turned to the wider economic role of rail. Not every journey has the same strategic value, so Transport for the North has shifted towards identifying strategic development corridors where stronger connectivity yields greater economic benefit. These corridors focus on labour-market agglomeration and supply-chain linkages, such as high-tech manufacturing clusters across Lancashire and South Yorkshire, or the energy sectors on the west and east coasts.

Finally, Worsley described the planned reform into Great British Railways. Although delayed, the intent is clear: simplify the structure, remove franchising, place GBR in a more direct relationship with operators, and strengthen the influence of regional and local leaders. The aim is to bring local knowledge closer to strategic decisions and reduce the distance between national policy and real passenger and economic needs.

Across the narrative, his core themes were persistent: accountability that migrates to the wrong place, strategy that is outsourced rather than owned, blind spots created by weak information flow, and the difficulty of delivering long-term strategy in a system prone to fragmentation and delay.

Discussion

The session explored the complex interaction between strategy, governance, and delivery in large, multi-stakeholder environments, using the UK rail industry as a case example. The discussion began with the question:

1. Turning Purpose into Strategy

David Dunning asked how clarity of purpose can be translated into actionable strategy, especially when multiple organisations and interests influence that purpose. David Worsley explained that in the rail industry, aligning strategy with purpose is challenging because delivery is typically realised through business cases that must demonstrate alignment with multiple external strategies (national, local, industry-level). Funding and priorities are fragmented, creating a “merge as it happens” environment. Lisa Botes added that while single organisations can align their internal units to purpose, multi-stakeholder scenarios like rail introduce enormous complexity. Worsley illustrated this with examples of local station improvements funded by combinations of government, private sector, and accessibility priorities, highlighting the difficulty of coordinating priorities and information.

2. Does Bottom-Up Demand Thwart Top-Down Purpose?

David Dunning raised the tension between bottom-up investment demand and top-down strategic objectives. Worsley acknowledged that, while some strategic alignment exists in the rail industry at the organisational level, local and private sector initiatives introduce competing priorities. Network Rail traditionally followed centralised five-year planning with government-specified outputs, but emerging local knowledge and social inclusion priorities are beginning to influence investment decisions. The discussion highlighted the dynamic tension between local initiative and overarching strategy, and the challenge of mapping purpose, objectives, and projects across multiple levels.

3. Who Is Responsible for Governance Design?

Tim Leech asked whether governance of the rail system is primarily a government responsibility. Worsley confirmed that, given most rail lines are loss-making and heavily subsidised, the UK government essentially designs the governance infrastructure and sets the strategic framework, leaving operators to implement within those parameters. This underlined the duality of public accountability and private operational execution.

4. How Does PMO and Support Offices Fit with Strategy Delivery?

Gregor Androjna asked how PMOs and similar offices connect strategy to execution. David Booth and David Dunning emphasised that strategy management is not just about formulation—it requires active, ongoing engagement to ensure projects and programmes align with strategic objectives. Dunning identified a middle layer gap between high-level strategic thinking and delivery-focused PMOs, which needs to integrate business-as-usual operations, asset development, and change portfolios. Worsley explained that Network Rail’s governance evolved from rigid manuals (GRIP) to more flexible project management frameworks (PACE) to better respond to local needs, reflecting the need for PMOs to adapt to strategy delivery rather than simply enforce process.

5. Combination of Strategy and PMO Departments

The session examined cases where strategy and PMO teams report to the same executive, fostering closer alignment and information flow. Participants agreed that this structure encourages better collaboration between corporate strategy and project teams, helping organisations prioritise initiatives that balance investment, operational performance, and asset delivery. Lisa Botes highlighted the intensive collaboration required to integrate domain expertise, strategy objectives, and project implementation plans.

6. Information Management Challenges

Worsley stressed that decision-making quality depends on timely, accurate, and traceable information. In the rail industry, information is often outdated or siloed, slowing assurance processes and weakening accountability. Tim Leech connected this to broader systemic issues in public infrastructure, noting that political incentives often reward strategy formulation while discouraging transparency about execution. The discussion highlighted the importance of culture, incentives, and governance structures in making information flows effective.

Hosts Wrap up / conclusions

In the wrap-up, the host drew these threads together under the BIG principles which cover clarity of purpose, strategic cascade and alignment, governance and prioritisation that is systematic rather than bureaucratic, clearly positioned support functions, and dependable information for accountability and assurance. Attendees were encouraged to use the session’s materials to begin similar conversations in their own organisations and to explore the linked resources, including the IASP and BIG bodies of knowledge, David Booth’s Strategy Journeys

Recent linked events

• BIG Welcome and Introduction (Why, what how)
• Frankenorg! 8 examples combined to provide the essence of using integrated governance
• BIG readiness – covering techniques to engage senior people on difficult subjects, and an example online readiness capture tool

Next?

Access the event Introduction – agenda and speakers.

Become a BIG Full Member or a Conference to access the session recording, slides and discussion for all previous and future Conference events. Receive a discount code to book onto future events:

• 3^rd December 12.30 PM UK – Inspiring GRC professionals into a role in strategy delivery?
  • Book directly here
• 10^th  December 12.30 PM UK – Mind the Gap: Strategy, Execution and Portfolio Management
  • Book directly here

Also – IASP Event:

• 9^th December – IASP UK Strategy Debate – Book directly here