HBR Guides to Building Your Strategic Skills Collection (3 Books)

CHAPTER 20

Five Ways the Best Companies Close the Strategy-Execution Gap

by Michael Mankins

Executives say that they lose 40% of their strategy’s potential value to breakdowns in execution. In our experience at Bain & Company, however, this strategy-to-performance gap is rarely the result of shortcomings in implementation; it is because the plans are flawed from the start.

Too many companies still follow a “plan-then-do” approach to strategy: The organization works tirelessly to create its best forecasts about the future market and competitive landscape. Leadership then specifies a plan that it believes will position the company to win in this predicted future. This approach may have made sense when first popularized by GE and others in the 1970s, ...