Your Company Runs on an Operating System You Never Designed
Most companies have values on the wall. Very few have values in the operating system. After twenty-five years of watching the gap between the two, I think I know where it breaks. Spoiler: it's not where the consultants are looking.
Alignment: the comfortable illusion before execution collapses
Alignment doesn’t collapse with conflict. It collapses quietly when smart people execute different interpretations of the same plan. Clarity is not alignment. Alignment is not execution. And most organisations die in the gap.
Incentives: the silent architect of strategy sabotage
If you want to align incentives with strategy, start here: strategy rarely fails in the slide deck. It fails in the reward system.
Decision latency: the hidden tax on strategy execution
Most strategies don't die because they're flawed. They die because decisions arrive too late or never get revisited when the premises collapse. I've lived that silence. I know what it costs. Decision latency doesn't look like dysfunction. It looks like prudence. Until the market decides for you.
When strategy lives in one head
Most organisations do not lack strategy in the absolute sense.
What they lack is a strategy that is shared, articulated, and exposed enough to become usable by more than a handful of people.
Your plan is lying to you (and you already know it)
Your annual strategy deck says you're aligned. Your quarterly reviews say you're making progress. Your team nods in meetings. So why does every real decision still end up on your desk? Because what you're calling strategy is actually a well-formatted lie that everyone has agreed not to question.
