Strategy in the drawer: five reasons why beautiful plans remain on paper
Why is the strategy not working and what should be done about it? I heard the same question from two CEOs and one funder with whom I had the opportunity to talk last month.
A carefully thought-out, beautifully designed document does not bring the expected results: the team does not believe in the strategic goals or even openly ignores them. In practice, the strategy remains a set of abstract formulations – a declaration for the sake of a declaration, not a living tool for moving forward.
In conversations with our colleagues, we have identified several key reasons why this is happening. Let's take a closer look at them.
Reason 1: Lack of reliance on real numbers
The strategy of, for example, an outsourcing IT company should be based not on general ambitions but on clear business indicators: project margins by areas and models of cooperation, conversion at each stage of the sales funnel, average customer life in the company, workload and revenue per specialist, cost per hour by region, discount level, and losses at the prepayment stage.
Depending on the industry, each business has its own basic indicators and benchmarks. But the main thing is that without taking this data into account, the strategy turns into a formal document that sounds good but has nothing to do with reality. Plans such as "we will become a billion-dollar company in ten years" often remain good slogans. Modern teams believe less and less in abstract promises and value specifics more and more.
A true strategy is a digitized, realistic plan, not a dream.
Reason 2. Confusion of concepts
Employees often confuse strategy with operational tasks: they explain their own mistakes or failures by saying that "the strategy is unclear," when in fact it is not about the strategic level, but about specific actions here and now. This creates the illusion that any failure is always a consequence of a poorly defined strategy.
Reason 3. Gap between the owner's and team's strategy
Sometimes the owner has one strategy, for example, the desire for expansion and growth, while the team has another: maintaining stability. This gap in expectations creates internal contradictions and weakens efforts. For the strategy to work, it is important that everyone – both the owner and the team – look in the same direction .
