Why Your Strategy Isn’t Working

You’ve used all the best practices — defined goals, analyzed competitors, crafted slick presentations, hired fancy consultants, and followed all the textbook steps.

Yet somehow, you’re still struggling to get real traction and achieve the success you envisioned.

As a 12-year strategy advisor to high-growth startups and executives, I’ve seen this dilemma frustrate even the savviest leaders.

But the problem is rarely a lack of sophisticated strategy.

The problem likely isn’t what you think. Chances are, your “strategy” is no strategy at all.

A Strategy That’s Not a Strategy

A real strategy requires certain key elements:

• A clearly defined target audience: Who exactly are you trying to reach? Without pinpointing an audience, you’re essentially creating solutions for no one.
• An understanding of audience needs/wants: What does that audience care about? Where are they struggling? Identifying pain points is crucial.
• Points of differentiation: How will you stand out in a crowded marketplace? Craft a unique value proposition tailored to audience needs.
• Concrete execution plans: A strategy must translate into practical, actionable steps across all levels of an organization.

A “strategy” lacking these components is essentially a wish list — a set of nice-sounding goals without a roadmap for achieving them. And wishes don’t yield results.

Why Strategies Fail

Let’s walk through the three most common pitfalls derailing strategy execution and how to course-correct:

Mistake #1: You Have a Plan, Not a Strategy

The first and most widespread issue is mistaking strategy for goals or a high-level plan. These are related but profoundly distinct.

Having a wishlist of goals you want to accomplish is not strategy. Strategy requires making clear trade-offs based on limited resources. It’s about deliberately saying no to some opportunities so you can focus on excelling at a specific approach.

Many view strategy as an annual paint-by-numbers planning process. But real-time strategic thinking is a daily muscle driven by asking incisive questions. Are we still aligned with the priorities that give us a distinctive edge? How do competitors respond to our moves? What barriers block execution?

Great strategy evolves through continually testing assumptions and risk scenarios. Planning keeps you pointed in the right direction; strategy is actively steering at each turn. Execute a dynamic process, not a static document.

Mistake #2: Mismatched Strategy and Culture

The values and norms of your organization must reinforce strategic choices. Culture trumps policy.

A company can’t achieve customer intimacy through scale and automation if its culture fixates on efficiency above all. Or become a disruptive innovator in risk-averse culture clinging to past success.

Culture reflects what your company truly rewards and incentivizes, not what it says it values. Look beneath the veneer.

Assess whether your strategy aligns with the cultural DNA or if it requires a deeper evolution. Culture change happens through leading by example daily, not top-down mandates. And it takes patience. But culture and strategy must fuse for execution to excel.

Mistake #3: Failure to Make Tough Trade-Offs

Often the barrier is an unwillingness to make the necessary trade-offs inherent in any strategy. Being “all things to all people” is not strategic.

Trade-offs mean sacrificing some short-term gains or ancillary activities to focus resources on a precise strategic priority. Saying no is hard but it creates competitive advantage in your target niche.

My distant mentor Michael Porter calls this establishing “fit” — aligning capabilities and processes to seamlessly deliver on your chosen strategy. Fit drives sustained dominance. Lack of hard choices means lack of fit.

Being brutally honest about these tough calls separates successful strategists. Let your strategy guide decisions about where to double down versus pull back. Master strategy through focus and sacrifice.

Mistake 4. Lack of Focus

It’s tempting to try being all things to all people, especially early on. But no company can excel at everything. Diffused efforts mean shallow impact.

The most effective strategies target a specific audience segment, then tailor everything to the needs of that audience.

Mistake 5. Not Connecting Strategy to Execution

Your strategy can’t exist as a 30-page slide deck seen only by the C-suite. For it to work, it must directly inform decision-making and activities across the organization.

Employees should understand how their individual roles ladder up to strategic goals. This connection often gets lost.

Mistake 6. Failure to Commit

Leadership teams must be fully bought into the strategy, consistently evangelizing it in communications and modelling commitment through their own actions.

Without this clear endorsement from the top down, the rest of the organization won’t put their weight behind the strategy either.

Building an Effective Strategy

The good news is that with deliberate effort, you can develop a focused strategy that drives real results. Here are some tips:

Start with the Audience

Rather than developing solutions and then finding people who may want them, start by identifying an audience with a pressing need. Build your strategy around fulfilling that need better than alternatives they’re currently using.

Conduct Rigorous Market Research

It’s shocking how many companies skimp on research about customer needs and the competitive landscape. Developing strategy in a vacuum without these insights is asking for trouble.

Cascade Strategy into Execution

Ensure everyone understands how their activities need to shift to align with the new strategy. Help them identify key steps they can take today, tomorrow and over the next quarter to translate it into action.

Simplify and Clarify

Complexity is the enemy of successful strategy execution. Continually communicate the strategy in simple terms everyone can remember and rally around. If they can’t summarize it, it’s too convoluted.

Be Accountable

As the leader, you must model the behaviours essential for your strategy’s success. And hold your team accountable for making it a living, breathing part of their work through regular touchpoints.

Avoiding common pitfalls and taking the right strategic approach from the start, you can set your company up for the sustainable growth and impact you seek. Just remember that good intentions won’t get you there. You need a real strategy, not just a wish list.

Boil effective strategy down to a few key mindset shifts:

First, live in your customer’s shoes. Strategy starts with an intimate understanding of their world, needs and desires. Build for them, not for you.

Do your homework thoroughly. Rigorously research competitors, industry dynamics, macro trends — anything that impacts your customer’s experience. Unknowns are strategy killers.

Be clear on what will set you apart. Don’t try to be all things to all people. Make tough trade-offs to be the absolute best at one thing for your chosen customer.

Align all activities to strengthen that position. Does everything you do day-to-day enhance your distinct value? If not, reconsider it.

Communicate simply and repeat often. Strategy only thrives when internalized by employees. Complexity confuses execution.

Finally, exemplify the change you want to see. The team follows your lead. If you take the strategic mindset seriously, they will too.

At the end of the day, great strategy is common sense. Start with the customer, get smart about their needs, focus on standing out, and execute with excellence. The rest are just details. Simplicity transforms. Sophistication paralyzes.

The Truth Shall Set Your Strategy Free

Take an unflinching look at why your strategy may be stalling. Identify which pitfalls most apply and course-correct.

Instill strategic thinking into daily decisions beyond an annual ritual. Assess cultural alignment. Make the necessary trade-offs. Set your strategy free through this clarity.

The Japanese call it “seeing with new eyes.” Maintain a beginner’s mindset with your strategy, re-examining from all angles. The path to mastery is through truth. Once you confront it, breakthrough is imminent.

© Buzzedison

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First published on Medium