Execution
The Execution Gap: Why Good Strategies Still Fail
Most leadership teams don't have a strategy problem. They have an execution problem.
They spend months agreeing where the business needs to go. A year or so later, they're explaining why the results haven't arrived. The usual response is to question the strategy, reshuffle the team or launch another round of initiatives.
Often the strategy was fine. The business just couldn't turn it into reality. That's the execution gap.
What we'll cover
Why execution is harder than strategy
How activity hides a lack of progress
Why someone has to manage the whole portfolio
Seven disciplines that close the execution gap
Five questions to test your own execution
Signs you have an execution gap
Execution is harder than strategy
A strategy might make a handful of choices: where to compete, where to cut cost, what to build. Each one turns into hundreds of decisions and changes across the business.
Take "improve margin". That can mean changes to pricing, procurement, structure, technology, processes and productivity. Each has a different owner and timescale, and they all compete for the same people and budget.
So the real question is whether the strategy has been turned into something the business can deliver:
Which initiatives matter most?
What has to happen first?
What should stop?
Who owns each outcome?
Which decisions need the executive team?
These sound like basic questions. In large transformations, the answers are often surprisingly unclear.
Activity is easy to report
Struggling transformations are rarely short of activity. There are steering committees, plans, dashboards, workshops and new systems going in.
The problem is that activity is easy to measure and progress is hard to measure. If a programme has hit 85% of its milestones, that shows good project discipline. It doesn't mean the business is 85% of the way to the result that justified the spend.
Transformation programmes exist to change business performance. Finishing the programme was never the point. When reporting focuses on activity, organisations get very good at showing work is happening and much less good at showing it's working.
Someone has to manage the whole portfolio
Large organisations often run 30, 50 or 100 initiatives at once. Each can have a sponsor, a plan and a Green status while the whole thing drifts.
That's because programmes depend on each other. They share the same experts and technology teams. One programme's benefits may rely on another delivering first.
No single programme manager can fix that. Someone has to manage the portfolio as a whole and make the calls on sequencing, resources and risk. In our experience, the most valuable decision a leadership team can make is what not to do.
Control means fewer surprises
When delivery gets hard, the instinct is to add governance: more reports, more meetings, more templates. That rarely adds control.
A better test is whether leaders can see problems coming early enough to act:
Are important decisions being made fast enough?
Are dependencies across programmes understood?
Does resource move when priorities change?
Are the original benefits still achievable?
And the most telling question of all: how often is the leadership team surprised?
If a programme moves from Amber to Red between reporting cycles, the question goes beyond why it deteriorated. Why wasn't it visible earlier? Was the right thing being measured? Was a risk known and not escalated? A transformation that keeps surprising its leaders isn't under control, however polished the dashboard looks.
Where a TMO fits
Most organisations already have a strategy team, project managers and often a PMO. What's usually missing is the layer that connects strategy to delivery across the whole business.
A good PMO brings discipline and reporting. A Transformation Management Office (TMO) goes further. It challenges delivery, spots dependencies, speeds up decisions, moves resources and checks that the expected value still stacks up. Read more in Strategy Office vs TMO: Who Owns What.
Seven disciplines that close the execution gap
In our experience, seven disciplines need to work together for strategy to turn into outcomes:
Intent: agree the business outcomes you're aiming for. A list of projects is a different thing.
Portfolio: turn those outcomes into a prioritised, sequenced set of initiatives that fits your capacity.
Ownership: give each outcome one accountable executive. Shared accountability usually means nobody is accountable.
Decisions: make them at the pace delivery needs. A decision stuck for six weeks can hold up several programmes.
Execution: step in as soon as delivery drifts. Waiting for the monthly meeting is too slow.
Adoption: make sure people actually use the new systems and processes. That's where the value comes from.
Value: keep checking that the work is improving revenue, cost, productivity or risk.
None of these is complicated on its own. The hard part is keeping all seven going for the length of a programme.
Five questions for leadership teams
Can we explain how our portfolio delivers our strategy?
Do our people and budget go to the initiatives that matter most?
Do we spot problems early enough to act, or do we explain them afterwards?
Are the decisions that delivery needs being made fast enough?
Can we show the value created so far?
If the answers are unclear, the problem probably sits in how the business manages execution as a whole.
Signs you have an execution gap
The execution gap rarely announces itself. Look out for these:
the strategy has been refreshed but results haven't moved
the portfolio keeps growing and nothing gets stopped
the same few people are named on most initiatives
board packs are long and decisions are few
benefits show up as forecasts and rarely as actuals
If several of these sound familiar, the strategy probably isn't the problem.
Frequently asked questions
What is the execution gap?
The execution gap is the distance between what a strategy sets out to achieve and what the organisation actually delivers. It usually comes from weak prioritisation, unclear ownership, slow decisions and poor adoption, more than from a bad strategy.
Why do good strategies fail?
Most fail in delivery. The strategy is translated into too many initiatives, nobody owns the outcomes, decisions stall and new ways of working aren't adopted.
What's the difference between a PMO and a TMO?
A PMO provides programme discipline, standards and reporting. A Transformation Management Office (TMO) goes further and actively manages the transformation as a whole: prioritising, resolving dependencies, speeding up decisions and tracking value.
How do you know if you have an execution problem?
Look for lots of activity with little visible change in results, repeated surprises at board level and a portfolio that keeps growing without anything being stopped.
How Condor helps
We work alongside leadership teams to turn strategy into a portfolio they can deliver. We set up and run TMOs, provide independent programme assurance and take hands-on responsibility for complex delivery. Past work includes £150m in cost savings for clients.
If you've got the strategy and you're still waiting for the results, we should talk. Get in touch
When Execution Matters, We Deliver.
