Many organizations still view strategy as a decision made by a small group and then handed down through a strategy rollout. The executive team creates a narrative, leaders spread the message, and managers are expected to turn themes into budgets, priorities, and weekly trade-offs. When results fall short, the usual diagnosis is "execution failed," and the common solution is to increase communication.
That logic overlooks a fundamental point: strategy succeeds or fails in the downstream decisions that assign people, time, and money. Middle managers and functional leaders bear much of the delivery burden, yet they are often brought into the process only after critical choices have already been made. They then inherit assumptions they did not test, targets they did not help shape, and trade-offs they did not agree to. In that environment, "alignment" can become mere compliance with a story instead of shared ownership of difficult decisions.
