Every year, executive teams around the world spend months crafting strategies—only to find, 12 months later, that they’ve barely moved the needle. The numbers don’t lie: More than 70% of strategies fail to deliver their intended results. The issue isn’t usually the strategy itself. It’s what happens—or more often doesn’t happen—after strategy design ends. Having worked with hundreds of senior leaders across industries, I’ve seen a consistent pattern: Strategy fails not because it’s poorly crafted, but because it’s poorly executed. Execution includes aligning people, systems and capabilities so that your strategy becomes a lived reality, not a 400-page slide deck.
At the heart of making strategy stick is what I call the Execution Edge—a triad of interconnected elements: capabilities, individual targets and management systems. These form the red circle within the Nine Elements of Organizational Identity (9EOI) framework, a model I developed to help leaders understand how culture, leadership and strategy must interlock to drive transformation.
Let’s unpack why strategy so often falls apart—and how the Execution Edge can prevent that from happening.
The Strategy-Execution Gap: Where Good Intentions Go To Die
Here’s the harsh truth: Strategic intent is meaningless without strategic infrastructure. Many leaders mistake clarity for commitment. They assume that once the vision is set and a strategy is agreed upon, execution will follow organically.
But execution needs more than consensus. It needs a scaffolding—a structure that translates high-level ambitions into tangible, daily actions. That’s where most organizations fall short. They don’t build the scaffolding needed to hold the strategy in place while it is still fragile and long enough to generate real change.
Enter The Execution Edge: Your Strategic Scaffolding
The Execution Edge—the outer circle of the 9EOI framework—is what keeps your strategy upright, visible and actionable across the organization. Think of it as the engine room of execution.
1. Capabilities: Building The Muscles For Change
Your strategy is only as strong as the people who carry it out. Do they have the skills, tools and capacity to deliver what the strategy demands? Too often, leaders assume that existing skills are sufficient. But new strategies almost always require new capabilities—hard skills (subject matter expertise) and people skills, often called “soft skills.” I’m not a fan of this term because these skills are the true hard skills for leaders.
Capability-building isn’t optional. It should be embedded into your execution road map, with a clear view of who needs to learn what, by when and why. Without investing in your people, you’re asking them to deliver outcomes they’re not equipped for.
2. Individual Targets: Creating Line Of Sight
One of the biggest reasons strategies stall is that employees don’t know how their daily work connects to the big priorities. You need to create a clear line of sight between the strategy and individual performance.
This doesn’t mean translating strategy into abstract KPIs. It means breaking it down into role-specific targets that are relevant and motivating. Everyone—from the C-suite to the front line—should be able to answer the question: What do I need to do differently to make this strategy succeed?
When people can connect their goals to the broader strategic narrative, they take ownership. They stop working in silos and start rowing in the same direction.
3. Management Systems: Embedding Strategy Into The Operating Rhythm
Strategy doesn’t live in workshops or offsites. It lives—or dies—in the rhythms and routines of day-to-day business. If your management systems don’t reflect your strategic priorities, those priorities won’t stick.
This means rethinking how you run meetings, track progress, allocate resources and reward success. If your strategy calls for innovation, but your management systems punish risk-taking, guess what wins? The status quo.
You need to hardwire your strategic intent into the business machinery. Regular check-ins, dashboards, incentives, feedback loops—all of these must align with the behaviors and outcomes your strategy requires. Otherwise, even the best strategy will fade under the weight of old habits.
Strategy Shaping Culture: A Leadership Imperative
Here’s the good news: When you activate the Execution Edge, strategy becomes more than a set of goals—it becomes a cultural force. People start to think and act in ways that reinforce your strategic priorities. Capabilities expand. Accountability sharpens. Progress accelerates.
But this doesn’t happen by accident. It takes leadership—not just from the top, but at every level. It takes leaders who are willing to challenge assumptions, rewire systems and invest in their teams.
Strategy succeeds or fades with implementation. It requires leaders to create the conditions for great ideas to thrive.
So, the next time you’re planning a strategic refresh, don’t just ask, “What do we want to achieve?” Ask, “What scaffolding will we build to ensure we get there?” The Execution Edge of the 9EOI framework gives you the tools to answer that question—and to make strategy stick.
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This article originally appeared on forbes
Main Image by Michael Dziedzic