Why Great Strategies Die in Delivery
- Darren Emery
- 4 days ago
- 4 min read
How UK tech leaders can finally close the gap between ambition and execution
Every January, boardrooms across the UK unveil PowerPoint-perfect strategies - elegant in design, inspiring in tone, and destined to fail quietly in delivery.
The gap between what leaders intend and what teams actually deliver is the biggest silent killer of performance in UK tech. One study found that 67% of well-formulated strategies fail due to poor execution, while only 1 in 8 digital transformations hit their goals. The rest get lost somewhere between the slide deck and the sprint backlog.
The problem isn’t vision. It’s translation.
The Four Silent Killers of Execution
1. Miscommunication – Strategy Isn’t Understood
A strategy on a page means nothing if teams don’t understand it or see where they fit. Too often, CEOs and boards craft bold goals in isolation, while the people delivering the work never hear the full context.
One survey found that 70% of project leads spend less than a day a month reviewing strategy, and 85% of executive teams spend under an hour discussing it. When leadership doesn’t talk about strategy regularly, execution drifts.
2. Misalignment – Too Much, Not Enough Focus
Companies rarely fail for lack of ideas; they fail for lack of focus. Dozens of initiatives compete for limited resources, priorities blur, and the organisation slowly tilts off balance.
As one strategy expert noted, “A tall steel scaffold erected just a few degrees out of vertical alignment is significantly weakened and more at risk of collapse.” The same holds true for organisations: tiny misalignments between vision and work compound until the strategy falters.
3. Mis-coordination – Siloed Teams, Fragmented Effort
Even when everyone agrees on the strategy, they often don’t execute together. Donald Sull, MIT Sloan School of Management expert on strategy and execution, completed research that found only 9% of managers can rely on colleagues in other departments all the time.
That means 91% of the time, delivery depends on luck, persuasion, or escalation. The result? Delays, duplicated work, and slow decision-making. Strategy collapses not because people disagree, but because they’re not synchronised - there is a lack of coordination and trust across different departments, functions, or business units.
4. Mis-adaptation – Strategy as a Static Plan
Many executives still treat strategy as a once-a-year artifact.
But as Dwight Eisenhower put it: “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.”
When markets shift, budgets squeeze, or technologies evolve, static strategies quickly become obsolete. Without a cadence for review and adjustment, teams end up executing yesterday’s priorities tomorrow.
Turning Strategy into a Living System
Execution doesn’t fail because people don’t care. It fails because strategy isn’t kept alive. The solution is to make strategy a living system - something visible, measurable, and constantly realigned.
1. Define Clear Metrics
Link outcomes directly to the strategy. Use OKRs or Balanced Scorecards to connect team-level goals to strategic outcomes. If your aim is to be “the market’s most responsive service provider,” measure response time, customer satisfaction, or time-to-market. Then make those numbers visible and owned.
2. Align Funding and Resources
Stop funding departments; start funding strategy. Allocate budgets by programme or value stream, not by organisational silos. That simple shift forces alignment and keeps money focused on initiatives that move the needle.
3. Deliver in Small, Iterative Increments
Treat every sprint review or demo as a strategy checkpoint. Ask: Are we still building the right thing? If not, pivot early. Agile isn’t just about speed - it’s about steering before you drift too far off course.
4. Empower Cross-Functional Teams
Structure around value, not hierarchy. Give teams end-to-end ownership of features or services, and the autonomy to make tactical calls aligned with strategy. Autonomy without clarity is chaos; clarity without autonomy is bureaucracy. The balance of both is execution.
5. Establish Regular Feedback Loops
Hold quarterly business reviews to reflect on strategic KPIs - then empower cross-functional, product-led teams to translate those objectives into the next cycle of meaningful outcomes and deliverables. At a team level, use retrospectives and stand-ups to surface misalignments early and adjust course before they escalate.
Quick Self-Check for Leaders
Ask yourself:
• Do your delivery teams review strategy monthly or annually?
• Is your funding model aligned to strategy or to departments?
• Can every team member explain how their work contributes to the vision?
• Do you measure output, or progress against outcomes?
If you can’t answer “yes” to at least three of these, your strategy is probably drifting - and no amount of delivery speed will save it.
The Real Work of Leadership
Strategy doesn’t fail in PowerPoint. It fails in translation; when leaders stop checking alignment, when feedback stops flowing, when teams can’t see the “why” behind their work.
Closing the gap isn’t about another framework; it’s about rhythm. Keep strategy visible. Review it often. Align funding, not just words. Empower your teams to adapt as reality changes.
In the end, success isn’t the brilliance of the strategy - it’s how well everyone rows when the water gets rough.
