When Strategy is Clear but Performance Lags
Part 3 in the “Strategy Without Illusion” series
Sometimes the strategy is clear. The plan makes sense. Everyone understands it.
And yet, performance drifts.
It’s a frustrating reality many Chairs, NEDs, and investors encounter. You’ve done the hard work of setting direction. You’ve built buy-in. You’ve avoided the illusion of alignment.
But the business still isn’t delivering.
Why?
The Myth of Understanding = Execution
Understanding the strategy isn’t the same as executing it. Strategy might be clear on the page, but clarity alone doesn’t change habits, remove barriers, or create urgency.
Plans stall not because people disagree with them, but because the daily pressures, embedded routines, and silent frictions inside the business pull in different directions.
In short: operational gravity always wins unless you actively fight it.
Common Causes of Performance Drift
Broken Execution Habits
Clear strategy requires disciplined, repetitive habits. Without the right cadence of review, decision-making, prioritisation, and feedback, even good plans lose momentum.
Cultural Drag
Strategy demands energy. If the culture is tired, defensive, or inward-looking, the execution will be slow and inconsistent, no matter how well the goals are understood.
Lack of Mid-Level Alignment
Senior leaders might be clear. But if the next layer down isn’t connected emotionally and practically to the strategy, day-to-day work will quietly revert to the familiar.
Superficial Alignment
Sometimes management can recite the major strategic goals, but they can’t tell you the key results, activities, or shifts needed to achieve them. They know the destination, but not the route. Without connecting strategy to real operational change, understanding becomes repetition, and operational gravity takes over. Teams quietly revert to what they’ve always done.
Unchallenged Variance
Without a discipline of visible follow-up, small slips become normal. If milestones aren’t owned and deviations aren’t constructively challenged, drift compounds.
Leadership Rhythm Breakdowns
Good leadership creates pace and cadence. When routines like reviews, check-ins, and realignment conversations fall away, execution weakens without anyone noticing immediately.
The Role of the Touchline Leader
When strategy is clear but performance lags, it’s tempting to assume it’s a motivation problem. Often it’s not. It’s usually a structural one.
From the touchline, your role isn’t to bark instructions. It’s to listen for drag, sense friction, and ask the questions that expose invisible barriers:
- How often is strategy being actively reconnected to day-to-day work?
- Where are decisions being made that don’t align with our stated goals?
- Where is progress stalling, and what’s the underlying reason?
- What leadership routines have slipped since we launched the strategy?
It’s not about demanding harder work. It’s about protecting clarity and operational pace once the big meeting is over.
Simple Steering Mechanisms
When execution drifts, it’s not about barking harder, it’s about creating small, visible anchors that keep teams aligned without overwhelming them.
A few ways touchline leaders can steer quietly but effectively:
- Create a visible scoreboard. Encourage the team to build a simple public tracker against key results, something everyone can see, not just senior management.
- Run a strategy retelling exercise. Ask teams to explain the strategy in their own words. In the military, part of delivering a mission briefing is to outline the plan clearly and simply, in everyday language the whole team understands. It forces leaders to think practically, not theoretically. The same principle applies in business. If the strategy can’t be explained simply, it won’t be executed consistently.
- Schedule a mid-year reflection. Recommend a no-defence conversation halfway through the plan. What’s working? What’s stuck? What’s changing in the outside world?
- Identify what needs to stop. Encourage the leadership team to actively spot work, meetings, reports, or initiatives that no longer align with the strategy. Execution gains speed not just by doing more, but by doing less of what doesn’t matter.
None of these steps are heavy-handed. They’re about keeping strategy connected to daily effort — and keeping reality connected to strategy.
Strategy Needs Maintenance
Strategy doesn’t stay alive by itself. It needs maintenance. It needs cultural reinforcement. It needs leaders who show, not just tell, that the direction still matters.
When NASA sent Apollo missions to the moon, the spacecraft didn’t travel in a perfect straight line. They made constant, small course corrections to stay on track. Without those minor adjustments, they would have missed their target by thousands of miles.
It’s the same with strategy. Success doesn’t come from a single bold move, it comes from regular, visible recalibration. Strategy needs maintenance because conditions shift, habits drift, and operational gravity always pulls you off course.
Performance lags when the story of the strategy fades from daily work. The touchline leader’s job is to keep it real, keep it moving, and help leadership teams turn clarity into consistent momentum.
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