When the strategy is set– but nothing happens

Why are seven out of ten brand strategies never implemented within an organisation?
Jasmin Seitel, co-managing director of the strategy consultancy diffferent, explains in her guest article how sustainable embedding works.

The SGMI Management Institute St. Gallen surveyed 1,012 executives about why strategies so often fail to be implemented. The results are a clear wake-up call: lack of management tools, unclear messaging, cultural resistance and rigid structures. However, not a single one of these issues is about the strategy itself. They are all about the organization responsible for executing it.

Strategies become effective when people make them their own – from the board to customer service. But what do most companies do? They often invest six-figure sums in brand strategy work, only to reduce the subsequent implementation to internal communication: a town hall meeting, an intranet post. Maybe some executive workshops. Then the strategy is considered ‘rolled out’. However, a rollout is not the same as embedding. Embedding means working on the organisation’s structure and the habits of its employees. And it begins with a question that is rarely ever asked: What would prevent our organisation from implementing this strategy?

AIDA Cruises developed its new purpose, ‘Opening Hearts’, and used it strategically to drive the company’s development. Since then, the marketing department, in collaboration with the relevant business departments, have aligned all value propositions and experiences with this purpose. That way, the organisation itself drives the change. And that is where the real secret lies: when people are not merely told about a strategy but actively participate in putting it into practice, something emerges that no strategy document in the world can create: ownership.

A similar example: a German premium car manufacturer was facing a purpose-driven transformation that extended far beyond marketing: product strategy, core processes, customer interaction, business model. Everything was to be put to the test. To give the initiative a clear direction, the Executive Board evaluated the jointly developed purpose prototypes. Those in charge decided on a purpose as their strategic North star. Next, all business units of the company were involved in the implementation process. They actively participated in translating the purpose into communication, service and product. The new purpose set the tone for brand experiences in over 30 markets and continues to act as a catalyst for service innovations to this day – from podcasts and live events to showrooms.

What both examples have in common is that, even before the implementation roadmap was set up, there was an honest examination of the organisation itself. Where are strategies being deliberately blocked? Which cultural beliefs are standing in the way? How well is the strategic direction actually understood across the various divisions?

To build a strong foundation, companies must truly understand their corporate culture and its needs. That means systematically identifying implementation barriers—such as resistance from local subsidiaries. Every organisation has its own beliefs, its own dynamics, its own pain points. Identifying and adressing these culture-specific characteristics is the essential first step for everything that follows.

A strategy can only be embedded successfully if it addresses multiple levels simultaneously:

Understanding
The strategy must be understood beyond the marketing department across the entire organisation – both its content and its concrete benefits for a person‘s own work.

Living
Strategy must be brought to life through formats that not only inform but also prompt employees into action. For example, through brand activation sessions, where teams work out how the brand strategy can be translated into concrete, measurable results. Or through challenger sessions, in which they test the strategy’s resilience against critical scenarios and questions.

Embedding
The strategy must be operationally anchored in the customer journey: in target group definitions, in messaging, and sales training. Just as AIDA did with the entire cruise experience.

Steering
Strategy need structures that make it manageable: KPIs in dashboards, linked to business objectives, complemented by regular review processes.

These four dimensions are interdependent. A strategy that is not understood and whose impact is not clear, cannot be lived. A strategy that is not operationalised and embedded through processes remains ineffective. And without steering, there is a lack of commitment that turns good intentions into habits.

In practice, these dimensions translate into concrete actions that are prioritized and built into a step-by-step roadmap. With retro sessions and iterations. Not because perfection is the goal, but because this is the only way embedding works: trial, reflection, fine-tuning.

The fact that 70 percent of strategies fail is not a law of nature. It is a choice. The choice to invest in developing strategies, but not in embedding them. Anyone who wants to change this must treat implementation for what it is: not the final step in the strategy process, but the first step in the organisation’s transformation.
This doesn’t require a complete reboot. Anyone who starts by asking the right questions today about their own organisation, its barriers and its strengths has already taken the crucial step.