Your strategy is fine. It leaks on the way down.
Most companies don’t fail at strategy. They fail on the four floors between the boardroom and the daily work. Here is where strategy leaks, plus three tests you can run this week.
Most companies don’t fail at strategy. They fail on the way down.
The strategy itself is usually fine. It was made by smart people in a room with good data and plenty of time. Everyone left the offsite nodding. Then it started its journey through the building. Somewhere between the boardroom and the team’s Monday morning, it lost its shape.
I’ve spent 18 years inside that journey. I started as a tester, and I’ve worked in startups, in banks with 10,000 people and in medtech. I co-led a banking organization from 60 people to more than 350. The pattern is remarkably stable. Strategy leaks at the same four floors, in the same ways.
Floor 4The boardroom
“Grow repeat customers.” It’s clear to everyone in the room, and it’s measurable nowhere else.
The first leak happens before the strategy leaves the room. It’s written as a direction, not as something anyone can check. “Grow repeat customers” is a good intent. But how many? By when? Measured how? Who owns the number?
If the leadership team can’t answer those four questions in a minute, every floor below will answer them differently. And every floor will believe it’s following the strategy.
SymptomEveryone agrees with the strategy, and nobody can tell you if it’s working.
FixOne number per strategic goal, with a baseline, a target, a date and an owner. If you can’t measure it, you haven’t finished deciding it.
Floor 3Leadership
KPIs that track activity, not the strategy. Everyone is green. Nothing moves.
This is the most comfortable leak, because it looks like control. Dashboards are full. Every department reports on time. But the metrics measure what each department does, not whether the strategy moved. Tickets closed. Projects on schedule. Meetings held.
When every traffic light is green and the business result is flat, the traffic lights are measuring the wrong thing.
SymptomStatus reports that are always green, and a strategy that never shows up in them.
FixFor every KPI, ask “so that what?” If the chain doesn’t end at a strategic goal within two steps, it’s an activity metric. Keep it for the team and take it off the leadership dashboard.
Floor 2The Product Owner
This is the seat where strategy and delivery collide daily, usually without a mandate.
The Product Owner is where the strategy has to become a decision: this, not that. It’s where “grow repeat customers” becomes “we build the loyalty feature before the new checkout”. It’s the most strategic job in the delivery organization, and it’s often treated as backlog administration.
When POs don’t know the strategy, don’t have the numbers or can’t say no, the backlog fills up with whoever asked loudest. The strategy doesn’t get rejected. It just gets outvoted, one ticket at a time.
SymptomA backlog that reflects stakeholder volume, not strategic priority.
FixGive every PO the strategic number their product moves, and the explicit right to decline work that doesn’t move it. Then measure how POs make decisions, not how many tickets they process.
Floor 1The team
Full calendar. Meetings that end without decisions. “Good enough” becomes the standard.
By the time the strategy reaches the team, it has become a list of tasks. The team works hard, often very hard. But the week is eaten by meetings that inform rather than decide. Nobody can tell you why this piece of work matters more than the next one.
Good people in this situation do what good people do: they deliver what’s asked, well enough. And “good enough” quietly becomes the standard.
Good enough doesn’t grow companies.
SymptomA busy team that can’t connect its work to a business outcome.
FixEvery piece of work gets its “so that”: “we build X, so that Y”. If nobody can finish the sentence, the work waits.
3Tests
Three tests you can run this week
You don’t need a transformation programme to find your leaks. You need three honest conversations.
- The one-number test
Ask each member of the leadership team: “What is the number that tells us our top strategic goal is working, and what is it today?” Count how many different answers you get.
- The “so that” test
Pick three random items from a team’s current sprint. Ask the team to finish the sentence “we’re doing this so that…”. Check whether the answers reach a strategic goal.
- The decision test
Look at last week’s recurring meetings. For each one, write down the decisions it produced, each with an owner and a date. Meetings with an empty list are where your strategy is going to die.
If all three tests come back clean, your problem really is the strategy. In my experience that is rare.
◐The mirror
My role is often to hold up a mirror. You may not like everything you see. But you can’t fix what you won’t look at.
There is no magic, one-size-fits-all framework that closes the gap between the boardroom and the daily work. There is a rigorous way to find where your strategy leaks, and to fix it floor by floor.