The 94% Gap from Strategy to Execution
Executive Summary
The Problem: 94% of C-suite executives believe their operating systems are jeopardising growth and performance, yet few take action to modernise them.
The Barrier: Four hurdles - The Urgency Trap, Efficiency Hangovers, the Quarterly Treadmill, and Industrial Muscle Memory - keep organisations stuck in 20th-century habits.
The Impact: This "94% Gap" leads to ineffective delivery, decision fatigue, shadow hierarchies, and a total disconnect between strategy and execution.
The Solution: Transitioning to modern "Micro-Capabilities" (like Dynamic Funding; Initiative Canvases; Adaptive Planning) allows for in-flight modernisation without disrupting current operations.
Research from Accenture last year highlighted what I've anecdotally known for some time: “94% of C-suite executives believe their operating models are jeopardizing their growth and performance.” *
This isn't a minor issue, it's a critical acknowledgment that the very engine driving the business - how we move from strategy to delivery, how work actually gets done, and value is generated - is fundamentally holding it back.
The Operating System
The Op System for your company is the foundational bridge from Strategy to Results - how you move from high-level ambitions through to day-to-day execution. In most companies it is not well understood, some parts are by some managers, some by teams, but there's normally little shared understanding and alignment across the company. It's hard to document and use that to share - which is understandable as the whole op system spans many different aspects and purposes, including: Structure; Governance; Decision Rights; Processes and Value Streams (for the more advanced companies); Tools, Technology and Data; How we meet, collaborate and share; and of course, People & Culture. All the things we do to run the business and create value for our customers and shareholders.
How can we expect the Op System to be effective when few understand it holistically? We often fall victim to the Darkness Principle - where no single person can see the whole system, so we all end up managing our own small corner in the dark, often conflicting with our neighbours.
When an operating system isn’t understood, or it falters, the impacts are profound and far-reaching:
Execution of Strategy Stalls: Even with a brilliant strategy, if your op system doesn’t execute on that strategy, it’s just a brilliant powerpoint pack. The lack of execution then results in senior leaders focussing on tactical issues rather than forward facing strategy.
Decision Fatigue: With an ineffective or misunderstood Op System, empowerment is low and too many decisions are escalated, and more unnecessary time taken from leadership.
The "Shadow Hierarchy" and Workarounds: When the official Op System is too slow or bureaucratic, employees stop following it. They rely on "who they know" rather than "how it’s supposed to work." Important rules are broken, shortcuts taken increasing risk. Transparency declines and makes the ability to coordinate and manage at scale impossible.
Stifled Innovation: New ideas get bogged down in bureaucracy, losing their market relevance before they even launch.
Slow Response to Markets: The organisation can't pivot quickly enough to respond to market shifts, competitive threats, or emerging opportunities.
Talent Frustration & Turnover: High-performing employees become disillusioned by inefficient processes, endless approvals, and a lack of autonomy.
Wasted Resources: Time, money, and effort are consumed by redundant tasks, rework, and managing complexity rather than creating value.
Missed Growth Opportunities: The inability to scale effectively or launch new initiatives means losing out on significant market share and revenue.
Given such critical consequences, why the inertia? In my work helping organisations adapt, I consistently observe these major hurdles to why there is little focus on understanding and improving the company operating system:
1. The "Urgency" Trap: Drowning in the Day-to-Day
Most managers’ calendars are a wall of back-to-back meetings. They spend the day reacting to a never-ending list of “urgent-important” tasks - firefighting client escalations, budget reviews, and HR paperwork just to stay afloat. When the immediate demands of keeping the lights on are overwhelming, the strategic work of fundamentally improving how the lights are kept on often gets pushed to the next quarter, or the next, until it disappears entirely. Leaders are so buried in day-to-day fires that they simply cannot find the air cover to focus on systemic improvement.
Moving Past the "Urgency" Trap:
Dedicated Time Blocks: Treat "operating system improvement" as a critical project. Schedule recurring, protected time on executive calendars specifically for this, away from daily distractions.
Delegate & Empower: Push tactical decision-making down to capable teams. This frees up executive time and empowers those closer to the work to solve problems proactively. Note: True delegation isn’t a simple hand-off. You have to build the team's capability to own the decision before you let go of the wheel.
Strategic Prioritisation: Be ruthless about what truly constitutes "urgent-important." Create space by consciously saying "no" to non-strategic demands or low-impact activities.
"Gemba Walks" for Leaders: Instead of relying solely on reports, spend time observing how work is actually done on the ground. This real-world perspective often highlights the most pressing operational blockages. Go to the source.
2. Efficiency Hangover: Cost-Cutting Kills Improvement
For decades, the dominant narrative around improving operations and delivery has been synonymous with cost-cutting. "Efficiency" has frequently meant streamlining processes by removing headcount, rather than continually redesigning how value is created and delivered. 10% less budget year on year with even more platforms to support, compounded with recruitment freezes and corresponding budget savings siphoned from your P&L into the broader company P&L.
These years of relentless cost-cutting leave organisations with "improvement muscles" that have atrophied. The idea of investing time and effort into improvement becomes a foreign concept or fading dream. People are often too stretched, too cautious, and too exhausted to innovate and improve.
Hangover Cure:
Start by Starting: If you don’t have a process to improve your process your Op System will deteriorate. Start a regular (short) improvement forum and actually change something for the better. Don’t overthink it. Experiment and move forward.
In a big, heavily governed corporate, we made 71 improvements in the first year of doing this. Build improvement as a habit.Reframe "Efficiency": Shift the focus from cost-cutting to value creation and flow efficiency. Emphasise that effective operating system enable faster delivery, higher quality, and better customer outcomes.They reduce rework, incidents and constant fire-fighting.
Competitive Advantage: Position operating system adaptation as an investment in sustainable growth and competitive advantage, not just a cost-saving exercise. Having a well known way of working is the best way to handle unexpected challenges or market shifts quickly.
Small, Visible Wins: Start with small, contained initiatives that deliver tangible improvements quickly. These "quick wins" build momentum, demonstrate value, and rebuild confidence in the process of change. Focus on the story telling.
Upskill for Innovation: Provide training and resources in modern organisational design, systemic thinking, and yes AI, to equip teams with the tools for genuine improvement. This should be provided to all people and teams, not just the ones you think will need it.
3. The Quarterly Treadmill: The Short-Term vs. Long-Term Tug-of-War
Public companies, in particular, often operate on a strict quarterly reporting cycle. The relentless pressure to deliver short-term results, meet analyst expectations, and maintain stock price often overshadows long-term strategic investments. Fundamentally rebuilding an operating system is not a quick change to deliver short-term results; it requires sustained effort, cross-functional collaboration, and a tolerance for some initial disruption. This deep work can be difficult to quantify in a single quarter's earnings report, making it a challenging sell when the focus is squarely on immediate financial performance. The "Quarterly Treadmill" makes "fixing the system" feel like a luxury they can't afford right now. Adopting a “Think Big, Act Small” or “prioritise the future” mindset, has greater long term potential than quarterly quick fixes. Balancing these two must be a balance, not always short term.
Finding a Balance:
Communicate Long-Term Value: Articulate a clear vision for how operating system improvements will deliver significant long-term value (e.g.: faster time-to-market, improved customer satisfaction, higher talent retention; more adaptability).
Ownership across the landscape: Improvements owned by leaders throughout the whole operating system helps break “large change” into smaller, manageable phases that can show progress and deliver incremental benefits.
Non-Financial Metrics: Track and communicate progress using key non-financial indicators that demonstrate improved operational health and capacity for future growth (e.g.: cycle time reduction, employee engagement scores, reduction in incidents).
Educate Stakeholders: Help investors and board members understand that strategic operational improvements are foundational to sustained, resilient growth, ability to adapt to unexpected market shifts and to exploit new opportunities.
4. Traditional Capabilities and Practices
People typically default to what they already know - traditional approaches designed for the industrial age, rather than reinventing or implementing new ones, or experimenting with improvement or adaptation.
If people don't have alternative modern practices, they default to old ones (think: Annual Budgeting; RACI; Stage-Gate PMO). This is the "muscle memory" problem - even when people want to change, they revert to what’s familiar because they lack a modern toolkit. Without alternatives, the "old way" becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
To move past the 94% problem, we have to stop defaulting to 20th-century tools and start replacing them.
A Modern Toolkit:
Micro-Capabilities: There’s no point trying to replace all aspects of “how we work” in one sweep. Most tools or capabilities can be treated and replaced separately. I call these micro-capabilities.
Timely introduction: With most training, people only retain a small percentage (around 10%) of what they learn. Similarly, trying to explain and introduce new micro-capabilities in large batches has a low chance of sticking as the replacement practice. Introducing one or two new approaches at a time, when they are being actively used, and allowing people time to become familiar with them will improve the chance of sustained adoption.
Expert Assistance and New Ideas: We don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Expert external assistance provides the outside-in perspective needed to spot the blind spots you’re too close to see, and they also bring many micro-capabilities which can be used as a default starting point for your new Op System. Having experienced guidance with tailoring modern capabilities to your business context ensures you don't just default back to the status quo when things get difficult.
A new approach to change: From Knowing to Doing
The fact that 94% of C-suite executives acknowledge their operating systems are jeopardising growth and performance is not just a statistic; it's a profound call to action. It highlights a critical paradox: there's something fundamentally missing between knowing there's a problem and actually acting on it.
Addressing it requires a new approach - using your old ways of working to create new ways of working won't give the results you need.
Addressing this paradox requires a shift in how we think about change itself. You cannot use a slow, bureaucratic process to build a fast, adaptive organisation. You have to start the way you want to finish - by building a system that is designed to adapt itself, with continuous improvement built into the fabric. Businesses that bridge this gap are the ones poised for resilience and growth in an increasingly dynamic world.
The biggest hurdle to change is the fear of disruption. Most leaders know their system is failing, but they can't stop the business to fix the engine. ReBoot Co. specialises in providing the air cover, a validated reliable approach to this kind of challenge and 'micro-capabilities' to modernise while you maintain momentum. Reach out for a brief conversation on where to start.
*Accenture research: https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insights/consulting/rethinking-operating-models