As a managing director, you know this moment: the strategy has been approved. Everyone nods. And then the deadliest thing happens.

As a managing director, you know this moment: the strategy has been approved. Everyone nods. And then the deadliest thing happens.

Here is the pattern:

The leadership team approves a strategy. Then comes the most damaging thing you can do: cascade it down to departments.

Procurement translates it for procurement. Production for production. Controlling for controlling.

I recently observed this at a mechanical engineering company with 800 employees. Just 12 months after the strategy workshop: six departments, six roadmaps, zero alignment — the originally crystal-clear strategy completely diluted in a game of Chinese whispers.

The problem: departments are systems. And systems have a basic instinct — self-preservation.

They optimise themselves. Not the strategy.

What emerges is not transformation. It is departmental politics with a strategy slide and roadmap laid over it.

Strategy rarely fails for lack of ideas.

It fails because of structures that protect themselves.

This is not a chicken-and-egg problem. It is an architectural and leadership task.

#DELIVER #Strategy #Transformation