Why Most Board-Approved Plans Never Deliver
Part 1: Strategy Without Illusion
The board pack’s clean. The numbers stack up. A few tweaks, and the plan is signed off.
Sometimes it follows a new investment. The thesis is solid. The excitement is real. Everyone nods, we’re backing the plan.
Other times, it’s just a fresh financial year and a budget that seems to make sense.
But a month in, delivery is already patchy. The team’s distracted, decisions slow, and energy fades. You can feel the early drag.
If you’ve seen this before, you’re not alone.
What looks like alignment at the top table often unravels because strategic intent was never actually created, only numbers were agreed. Teams can’t multiply strategic knowledge into operational results when that strategic knowledge was never clearly established in the first place.
This is the illusion of alignment. Everyone appears to agree, but beneath the surface, they’re moving in different directions because they understand different things by the same strategic language.
How the illusion plays out in real businesses
It’s subtle. There’s no argument. There’s agreement in the room, but confusion in the execution. Strategic intent is implied, but not explored. Budget conversations pass as strategic planning. Teams say “yes” to direction, but interpret it through completely different operational frameworks.
The illusion of alignment shows up as agreement in meetings, misalignment in action. Strategies filled with buzzwords and assumptions that sound clear but guide no actual decisions. Teams aligned on the destination but holding different maps to get there. Everyone executing what they think the strategy means, without ever testing whether they’re thinking about the same thing.
Why it happens
Most people don’t like friction. In the boardroom, that means opting for polite agreement rather than digging into difficult questions that might reveal strategic gaps. Executives nod along because they don’t want to appear obstructive or slow the process. Investors and board members accept the nod as genuine commitment rather than surface compliance. But no one checks whether the financial targets actually map to deliverable operational activity with clear strategic intent.
There’s also a fundamental confusion between agreeing on the numbers and aligning on the strategic approach that will deliver those numbers. The Strategic Multiplication Framework™ requires clarity of intent that goes far beyond financial agreement.
Where I see it most
In my experience across Chair/NED, Interim CEO, and Executive Coach roles, I rarely encounter a business that has conducted a proper strategic intent session that could support systematic multiplication of strategic knowledge.
What happens more often is this: The FD or CFO drafts a budget, often based on what they think the board wants to see, and circulates it internally. With competing pressures and daily operational demands, the executive team rushes to provide input so the board pack can be finalised on time.
At the board meeting, the FD or CFO walks the board through the budget. A few tweaks are made. And that’s it, next year’s plan is signed off.
It’s a process driven by finance and deadlines, not strategic intent and operational clarity. The assumption is that because the numbers are agreed, the team is aligned on how to deliver them. But beneath the surface, there’s often no shared understanding of the strategic approach that should guide daily decision-making.
This disconnect, between a financial plan and operational strategic intent, is where the illusion of alignment quietly takes root and prevents any possibility of systematic multiplication.
Why strategic intent often isn’t written
There’s another issue that’s rarely talked about. Many executive teams simply don’t know how to create clear, operational strategic intent that can guide decision-making and be multiplied throughout the organisation. They’ve seen 75-page documents created by consultants or academics, full of analysis, frameworks, and vision statements, but those plans almost never translate into day-to-day decision guidance.
When the environment shifts, those same plans are too cumbersome to adjust quickly. So proper strategic intent is never written. What gets signed off is a financial projection, not a direction of travel with clear operational guidance. And the illusion deepens because there’s nothing concrete to test alignment against.
Strategy ignores the outside world
Even when strategic intent is written, it’s often done in a vacuum. There’s no pressure testing against external reality. No external challenge to assumptions. And no real attempt to answer the fundamentals that should inform strategic thinking: What are our competitors prioritising that we’re not seeing? What are our customers asking for now, not last year? How are our suppliers behaving, and what risks or opportunities does that create? Are our pricing assumptions still realistic given market dynamics? Have market conditions shifted in ways we haven’t acknowledged in our strategic thinking?
These questions aren’t advanced strategy. They’re the fundamentals that should inform strategic intent. But they’re often left unanswered because the plan is shaped internally and driven by financial targets, not market realities or competitive positioning.
A proper strategic intent framework should begin with these external fundamentals. If they’re missing, you’re not building strategy that can be multiplied effectively. You’re dressing up a forecast and hoping execution will somehow figure out the strategic guidance it needs.
Strategic intent doesn’t need to be complicated
Strategic intent might sound grand, but at its core it’s simply clear operational guidance: a route from here to where you need to be, with decision-making criteria that teams can apply when you’re not there to direct them.
Crafting this doesn’t require a two-day retreat or a 75-slide deck. With the right agenda and clear structure, I’ve seen executive teams build strong, actionable strategic intent in a 4-5 hour session using The Strategic Multiplication Framework™ approach.
In every interim assignment I take on, I create a one-page strategic intent framework. It lays out the mission, the direction of travel, and the key initiatives that will get us there. It’s amazing how quickly that simple A4 sheet becomes a reference point for decision-making throughout the business. It doesn’t need to be polished. It just needs to be clear enough to guide decisions when the leadership team isn’t in the room.
Real alignment is a rhythm
The real test of alignment isn’t whether the team agrees in the room. It’s whether they keep checking back against the strategic intent once the operational work begins and can make consistent decisions based on that intent.
One of the simplest questions a Chair, NED, or Portfolio Manager can ask is: “What’s your routine for staying aligned with strategic intent?” Where do you pause to reconnect with the strategic framework? What triggers a reassessment of whether activities align with intent?
With the one-page strategic intent framework I use, this becomes much easier to implement systematically. I tell teams: “If it’s not on the strategy sheet, we shouldn’t be doing it. And if we should be doing it, it should be on the strategy sheet.”
The structure is deliberately simple, but precise. At the top is the mission, which often includes the agreed financial target, so the commercial context is explicit. Below that are the objectives, the major segments of the numbers and any non-negotiable deliverables that must happen. Then finally, a short list of critical results, the strategic threads that progress the objectives and signal meaningful movement toward the mission.
It’s always one page. It keeps the business focused on what matters strategically. And because it sits in every board pack, the executive reports are written to align with it, or explain variances from strategic intent. That’s how strategic clarity becomes operational culture.
Who actually knows the strategic intent?
Ask your executive team, individually, what this year’s mission and top strategic objectives are. A fair few won’t be able to tell you clearly. Some will say, “Do you mean the budget?” which tells you everything about whether strategic intent exists in any meaningful way.
Walk into the wider business, and it’s the same. There may be a vision statement hanging in the hallway from some corporate initiative years ago. But ask how it connects to today’s operational decisions, and you’ll get blank looks.
When strategic intent isn’t clear and current, resources scatter across activities that don’t build toward the same strategic outcome. Teams pull in different directions because they’re interpreting strategic direction differently. And no one’s sure what operational choices actually support the business strategy.
The role of multiplication leadership
In the “From the Touchline” series, I explored how effective leaders multiply influence through clarity and timing, not volume or visibility. That same principle applies here. As I noted in “When to Step In, and When to Stay Out,” General von Moltke understood that the best plans collapse without clear operational intent. What matters isn’t rigid control, it’s shared understanding that enables distributed decision-making.
Multiplication leadership means protecting that strategic understanding when day-to-day operational work tries to dilute it.
The Chair, NED, or Portfolio Manager isn’t there to second-guess tactical decisions. They’re there to sense when alignment around strategic intent is superficial rather than genuine. They’re there to test gently, to ask questions that reveal whether the strategic direction is genuinely shared and operationally meaningful, or simply accepted at surface level.
It’s not enough to nod at the numbers. The multiplication leader needs to ask, “How exactly do we expect this strategic approach to translate into operational decisions, and who’s responsible for ensuring that translation happens consistently?”
This isn’t about tripping up management. It’s about avoiding the moment six months in when nobody owns the strategic outcome, and everyone says “we thought we were interpreting the strategy differently.”
What real strategic alignment sounds like
Real alignment around strategic intent sounds uncomfortable because it requires specificity. It includes phrases like “This is what we’re not doing, even if it seems attractive.” “Here’s what strategic success won’t look like, even if it shows short-term progress.” “If X happens, we’ll pause this strategic direction. If Y happens, we’ll accelerate it.”
It’s deliberate. It’s specific. And it usually needs repeating because strategic intent has to be reinforced constantly against operational pressures that naturally diffuse focus.
A simple test I often use
In strategic sessions I lead, I’ll often ask each executive privately to write down what they think the mission and strategic priorities are, then compare the answers. You’d be surprised how rarely they match, even after what seemed like clear strategic discussion.
This isn’t about embarrassing anyone. It’s about surfacing gaps in strategic understanding early, before they turn into boardroom frustration or operational misfires that could have been prevented with better initial clarity.
Why strategic multiplication matters
Alignment isn’t about agreement. It’s about coordinated action guided by shared strategic intent.
Numbers don’t deliver outcomes, teams do. And they need more than a spreadsheet to stay aligned around strategic direction. They need clear operational guidance that helps them make the right decisions when leadership isn’t there to direct every choice.
Coordinated action only happens when everyone has the same picture of what matters strategically, why it matters for competitive positioning, and how operational decisions should support strategic intent.
If you’re operating from the touchline as Chair, NED, Portfolio Manager, CEO, or Managing Director, your job isn’t just to listen for what’s said in strategic discussions. It’s to sense what’s understood operationally and whether that understanding can support systematic multiplication of strategic knowledge throughout the organisation.
That’s where real multiplication influence lives. And that’s where strategic intent becomes more than a planning exercise.
When potential fades
This is also why so many businesses with strong original investment thesis miss the chance to deliver on that potential. They’re not failing because the strategic idea was wrong. They’re stuck executing tactical activities without clear strategic intent, even when market conditions have changed the strategic context completely.
The market moves, the operational model stays the same, and the cash runway shortens. After two or three years of missed targets, patience fades. Initial excitement gives way to operational fatigue. The business drifts quietly into the ‘underperforming’ section of the portfolio.
But what about the initial excitement? The conviction behind the original investment thesis? Was that all an illusion too?
More likely, the execution never stood a chance because real strategic intent was never built, and The Strategic Multiplication Framework™ was never implemented to translate strategic knowledge into operational results.
The Strategic Multiplication Framework™ forms part of my strategic operations consulting approach. Working as Chair/NED, Interim CEO, or Executive Coach, I help senior management teams multiply their strategic knowledge and operational effectiveness.
Follow the complete “Strategy Without Illusion” series for systematic approaches to translating strategic intent into multiplied operational results.
