Why Strategy Fizzles Out After the Kickoff
Strategy kickoffs create excitement that fades within weeks. Learn why strategy must become team OKRs and new metrics, and why leaders need to keep iterating.
It is a story we hear often. A leadership team tells us: “We had our strategy kickoff recently, and everyone was excited.”
The sales team was pumped. The marketing team loved the new messaging. The strategy team was proud of its work, and the CEO was convinced the new strategy would show results quickly.
What actually happened? Almost nothing. Within weeks, the organization had forgotten the new strategy. That is the gap between strategy and execution.
Strategy has to become team priorities
The main reason is that the strategy was never translated into something meaningful for each team. What matters to a team are its short-term priorities. The strategy needs to show up there: in the team’s OKRs, in language the team understands, and in the metrics that matter.
New strategy, old metrics, old results
If your strategy is new but you still measure the old things, you will get the old results. This is the biggest danger with a new strategy. A real strategy shift often comes with some cannibalization. Revenue may dip for a while, usage may fall, and churn may even rise, because you are moving toward a new segment or a new market. You cannot simply A/B test your way there, because in the short term the comparison will always look bad.
Conviction, translation, iteration
So leaders need to be convinced of the direction, translate it into something meaningful for every part of the organization, and then keep iterating on it. That last step is the one many leaders forget.
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