Bridging the strategy-results gap

Ram Charan, the renowned global business advisor and author who has worked with CEOs and boards around the world, has long argued that organisations do not fail to achieve their results because of bad strategy – they fail because of weak execution. Leaders often know where they want to go. What they underestimate is the difficulty of building organisations capable of getting them there.

This gap between strategic intent and actual results is one of the most persistent challenges in management. Strategies are carefully developed, priorities are announced, and transformation agendas are launched with optimism. Yet months later, performance frequently lags ambition. The problem is rarely a lack of direction. More often, it is a failure to design the organisation for execution.

“Studies consistently show that performance differences between organisations are less about the brilliance of their strategies and more about how well leadership, systems, culture, communication, and measurement are aligned to support execution.”

Our research and experience in strategy implementation reinforce this point. Studies consistently show that performance differences between organisations are less about the brilliance of their strategies and more about how well leadership, systems, culture, communication, and measurement are aligned to support execution. In other words, strategies fail when organisations are not built to deliver them. Six reinforcing drivers repeatedly emerge as the foundations of successful execution.

The first is the execution premium – the discipline of turning strategic priorities into sustained follow-through. Charan’s work emphasises that execution is not an operational afterthought but a core leadership responsibility. Organisations that outperform their peers treat execution as a continuous management process, not a periodic review.

The second driver is enhanced organisational systems. Organisational design scholars such as Jay Galbraith have shown that structures, processes, and incentives must be aligned with strategy if execution is to succeed. When reporting lines, approval processes, or reward systems pull in a different direction from stated priorities, execution falters. I saw this clearly in a Nigerian pension fund administrator whose strategy emphasised customer responsiveness. Yet internal workflows were built primarily around regulatory compliance and multiple approval layers. Staff wanted to serve customers faster, but the system slowed them down. The strategy pointed one way; the systems pulled another.

Third is leadership and managerial capability. Research linking managerial quality to firm performance underscores that managers are the real translators of strategy into action. As scholars like Mark Huselid have argued, organisational performance is deeply shaped by the quality of leadership and managerial practices that guide everyday work. In a telecommunications company operating across several African markets, the strategy called for regional integration and shared platforms. However, many country managers lacked the cross-border coordination skills required to collaborate effectively. Local targets dominated attention, and the expected regional synergies remained largely unrealised.

The fourth driver is an appropriate organisational culture. Culture shapes the everyday behaviours that determine whether strategy lives or dies.

Research by John Kotter and James Heskett demonstrated that culture can be a powerful driver of long-term performance when it aligns with strategic direction. But culture cannot simply be declared; it must be modelled. In a light manufacturing company in Trinidad & Tobago, leadership articulated a strong cultural vision but failed to show a personal commitment to those cultural imperatives or hold themselves to the standards espoused on paper.

The fifth driver is impactful and strategic communication. Research in organisational communication shows that shared understanding is essential for coordinated action. When communication is inconsistent or overly abstract, different parts of the organisation interpret the strategy in different ways. Execution then becomes fragmented, with teams moving in parallel but not necessarily in alignment.

Finally, measurement, accountability, and innovation provide the feedback loops that turn strategy into learning. Robert Kaplan and David Norton’s classic work on performance measurement systems highlights how linking strategy to clear metrics and accountability structures strengthens execution. When organisations measure what truly matters and hold people responsible for results, they create a discipline of continuous improvement. Without such systems, strategy remains an aspiration rather than an operational reality.

In one organisation we worked with in the energy sector in Nigeria, a performance management system existed as far as the policy was concerned, but there was very little in terms of holding people accountable and measuring results based on that policy. In fact, employees and managers were routinely promoted and received pay increases without implementing the performance management policy.

Across these six drivers, a common pattern emerges: strategy rarely fails because people disagree with it. It fails because the organisation’s systems, capabilities, culture, communication, and measurement frameworks are not aligned to support it. For many organisations in Nigeria and across Africa, this insight is particularly relevant. Strategic ambition is not lacking. The real challenge is building the execution architecture that turns intent into performance.

Bridging the strategy-results gap does not begin with a new strategy document. It begins with leaders asking whether their organisations are truly designed to deliver the strategy they already have, diagnosing the gaps that exist and plugging them.  Over the coming weeks, we will explore each of these six drivers in greater depth. The evidence is clear: strategy delivers results only when execution is treated as a leadership discipline, supported by systems, culture, capability, communication, and accountability that all point in the same direction.

Omagbitse Barrow is the Chief Executive of Efiko Management Consulting, which supports organisations to translate their strategy to results.

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