Moving organisation’s strategy from paper to performance

It’s a familiar scenario in many boardrooms: a well-articulated strategy is approved, documented, and celebrated but then, slowly, it fades into the background of day-to-day operations.

The first half of 2025 will soon be behind us, and while the vision remains compelling, your strategy execution continues to lag. This is not unusual.

According to the Balanced Scorecard Institute, between 67 percent and 90 percent of strategies fail at the execution stage. The disconnect between strategy and action goes beyond a missed opportunity to a costly failure.

As leaders at top, we are often measured by the quality of our decisions. Yet, organisational success is measured by what gets done and sustained. As such, strategy is not a set of PowerPoint slides but a series of disciplined actions carried out consistently and coherently across the organisation.

But first, we must examine: what stops strategy execution? What blurs the optimism and fanfare into a placeholder for potential that may never materialise? Too often, execution falters because strategic goals remain abstract. They sound impressive in executive summaries, but offer little guidance to execution.

At the same time, ownership of the strategy often remains locked within senior management, leaving middle managers and frontline teams unsure of their role in delivering the vision.

At our organisation, we’ve learnt — sometimes the hard way — that translating strategy into results requires more than commitment. It demands rhythm. We now break our strategic goals into 90-day sprints that generate urgency without burnout. These time-bound cycles create accountability and momentum.

But rhythm alone isn’t enough. Strategy must belong to everyone. It must find its way into individual goals, team rituals and performance reviews. It’s no longer acceptable for strategy to reside only in the minds of the executive team.

Management should keep asking: What’s working? What’s not? What needs to shift?. The management must ensure that all employees have been area aware of the company's strategies.

So, as you head into the second half of 2025, now is the time to lay the foundation for strategy execution. This means investing in leadership development, strengthening digital collaboration, embracing agile ways of cultivating a change readiness culture. In the end, the future doesn’t reward the most thoughtful plan. It rewards the most focused action.

When a software developer, a supply chain coordinator or a customer service agent can articulate how their work contributes to the larger vision, execution becomes shared work instead of delegated work.

For instance, we had an Enwealth 2025-2029 Strategy Launch, a statement that sounds polished and visionary but requires better articulation for the team.

Every organization needs relentless communication with thoughtful, layered messaging to move from leadership briefs to visual dashboards to progress stories shared across teams to ensure strategy stays in focus.

The writer is the CEO Enwealth Financial Services Ltd