Why is it so hard to see that Strategy Delivery needs fixing?

When strategy delivery fails, it can of course be for many well documented reasons. it’s rarely because leaders don’t care. Could it be because they don’t see strategy delivery as a capability that their organisations that needs to build?

Ask any executive if strategy execution is important, and they’ll agree. Ask whether their organisation needs to improve it, and you might get a pause. Why? Because raising the perception of a need to improve strategy delivery is one of the hardest challenges in modern leadership.

Even when data, missed goals, or frustrated teams make the problem visible, many organisations struggle to act.

Let’s discuss why — and why we need to start a different kind of conversation than simply beating ourselves up on strategy delivery issues.

🔍 1. Success is still measured by Planning, not Delivery

Many leaders see the creation of a strategy as the achievement itself. The launch gets celebrated; the delivery gets delegated and assumed. Planning is high-status, visible, and intellectually engaging — whereas execution is messy, political, and often thankless. The mindset of “we have a strategy — job done” remains surprisingly common.

🧠 2. Overconfidence and Cognitive Bias

Humans are wired to believe our own story. Leaders often overestimate how well the strategy is understood or supported. Confirmation bias reinforces a sense that things are “mostly on track,” even when warning signals are clear. It’s not denial — it’s psychology. But it means the case for improving delivery must cut through optimism and ego with evidence, empathy, and clarity.

🧱 3. Culture and Politics get in the way

Let’s face it — admitting weak execution can feel risky. It raises questions about leadership, competence, and performance. In many organisations, challenging the status quo can feel like “rocking the boat.” When things look “good enough,” there’s little appetite to dig deeper. Yet this is where complacency hides — and where transformation should start.

📊 4. Poor Visibility of What’s Really Happening

Execution data is often fragmented or inconsistent. Without a shared picture of delivery performance, it’s easy to assume things are fine. This lack of transparency creates false confidence — we can’t fix what we can’t see. Integrated governance and performance information — like that championed by the BIG Body of Knowledge  — can make strategy delivery visible, measurable, and actionable.

🔄 5. The Tyranny of the Short Term

Under pressure from quarterly targets or daily operations, strategy delivery feels abstract. The urgent eclipses the important. But without sustained investment in long-term delivery capability, organisations simply keep repeating the same cycle — new strategies, same execution gaps.

🧩 6. Misaligned Incentives

Many leaders are rewarded for planning, financial outcomes, or BAU performance — not for ensuring the strategy is delivered effectively. Until accountability systems value delivery as much as design, effort will stay skewed toward the front end of the strategy lifecycle.

🪞 7. The Illusion of Progress

Activity often gets mistaken for progress — workshops, KPIs, dashboards — without connecting those efforts to genuine outcomes. We celebrate motion, not impact. It’s time to change that.

💡 Cultural Challenges

The implications from above are:

Culture challenge 1: Until we stop throwing plans “over the wall” to progress, the delivery gap will persist.

Culture challenge 2: Until we shift to progressing strategy delivery using evidence and clarity along with empathy – our opinion-based arguments around being “mostly on track” will continue to mislead us.

Culture challenge 3: Can we develop a psychologically safe environment and raise the perception of need to do something – without disrespecting someone’s story or appearing to throw stones at big grizzly bears?

Culture challenge 4: Can we get over tendencies for “Don’t Tell/Don’t Ask” and enable us to “hear and see evil” – so we can talk of that professionally, not emotionally?

Culture challenge 5: Can we give priority to all of our workloads to enable managers, team leads and staff members to make the right day to day choices for what might provide reward tomorrow?

Culture challenge 6: Can we reward people based on achieving strategic and performance-based objectives?

Culture challenge 7: While it is important to manage the steps – can we keep objective and goal central to agendas for progress and control?

💡 So what can we do about It?

If we can unpack why strategy delivery is so hard to talk about, frameworks like IASP BOK and BIG BOK can then help your organisation turn strategy into a living capability — not a static document.

Because improving strategy delivery isn’t about another framework — it’s about creating the conditions and processes for effective strategy conversations, agility, and accountability.

• At the BIG Conference, we will show how to close the BIG gap to successful strategy delivery, and what is needed to the shift to a more ongoing, dynamic approach to overcome the poor success rates in strategy delivery.
• We will also cover
  • How the IASP Body of Knowledge (BOK) gives strategy professionals the tools and language to manage the full lifecycle from intent to delivery.
  • How the BIG Body of Knowledge (BIG BOK) helps organisations build governance, information, and cultural systems that connect strategy to execution — dynamically, transparently, and sustainably.

Recognising the strategy delivery problem is the first step, and grasping the cultural issues is vital before offering solutions. That’s why our upcoming presentation at the BIG Conference will call for starting the journey with safe conversations about cultural issues as much as mechanical ones.

🔔 Join us

If you’re an executive, strategist, governance or change professional who’s ever felt the pain of “great plans, poor delivery,” this session is for you.

🗓 BIG Conference — November 2025
🎤 Session: Strategy Delivery: Rigour vs. Agility — Do We Need Both?

Presented by David Booth and David Worsley from the International Association of Strategy Professionals. David Booth is author of ‘Strategy Journeys – a guide to effective strategic planning‘, and David Worsley is Rail Strategy Manager at Transport for the North. Introduction below:

This event is done in collaboration with the International Association for Strategy Professionals UK Branch – more about the branch here.

Let’s make strategy delivery visible, valued, and finally — achievable.

#Strategy #Governance #Leadership #IASP #BIG #Change #BusinessTransformation