A surprising share of strategy engagements begin with a leadership team convinced their strategy is wrong, when the diagnostic reveals the strategy was reasonable and simply never got executed as designed.
Ask whether last year's plan was actually run
Before revisiting the strategy itself, we check whether the prior plan was executed as written. Frequently, initiatives were reprioritized quietly at the middle-management layer without ever reaching the leadership team's attention.
Look for a pattern across failed initiatives
One missed initiative is noise. Three or four missed initiatives that all required cross-functional coordination point to an execution and governance gap, not a flawed strategic direction.
Fix the right layer
Rewriting a sound strategy to solve an execution problem wastes a planning cycle and leaves the underlying delivery gap in place for the next plan to fail against too.