As the year comes to a close, many leadership teams are in full swing with their annual strategic planning. The familiar rhythm of planning retreats, detailed spreadsheets, and high-level discussions about growth opportunities takes center stage. For 2025, companies are once again pouring significant time, effort, and resources into crafting what they hope will be their winning blueprint for success. Yet, as history shows, by spring, many of these plans will be set aside, lost in the day-to-day hustle. Why does this happen?
A staggering 60-90% of strategic plans fail to fully come to life. The main reason: poor execution. This reality teaches us an essential truth—while creating a plan is critical, the ability to execute it effectively is what truly separates successful organizations from those that falter.
Execution: The Real Driver of Success
Every business—whether a lean startup or a multi-billion-dollar corporation—needs a plan. Strategic planning provides the roadmap for achieving key objectives, navigating market volatility, and responding to competitive threats. It defines your goals, market positioning, and financial forecasts. But there’s a critical disconnect between planning and doing. Too often, leadership teams spend months perfecting their strategy but fail to turn those ideas into concrete, measurable actions.
The difference between success and stagnation lies in how well an organization can execute its strategic plan. Execution transforms intentions into outcomes. It bridges the gap between theoretical ideas and the day-to-day operations needed to achieve business growth. Without a clear path from strategy to execution, even the most sophisticated plans will remain ineffective.
Five Key Attributes of a High-Impact, Executable Strategic Plan
So, how do you create a strategic plan that doesn’t just live on paper, but actually delivers results? The key is ensuring that your plan is not only well-thought-out but also structured for execution. Below are five critical attributes to focus on if you want to make sure your strategic plan drives real progress:
1. Stakeholder-Centered: Aligning for Success
No plan can succeed without buy-in from key stakeholders—customers, employees, shareholders, suppliers, and the broader community. Aligning your strategy with the interests and values of these groups is crucial. Why? Because when stakeholders are engaged, execution becomes smoother, more efficient, and more impactful. Stakeholders feel invested in the outcomes, which means they’re more likely to support the necessary actions to bring the plan to life.
Companies that focus on stakeholder alignment and engagement consistently outperform their peers in profitability, innovation, and speed of growth. When your strategy considers the interests of all involved parties, you reduce conflicts, build trust, and create a clearer path to execution.
2. Radically Prioritized: Focusing on What Matters Most
One of the most common pitfalls in strategic planning is attempting to do too much. When leadership teams set too many priorities, resources become stretched, and focus is diluted. The result? Initiatives stall or fail to deliver expected outcomes.
Radical prioritization means focusing your plan on the few actions that will deliver the most impact. It requires discipline—choosing what not to do can be just as important as deciding what to pursue. Successful execution hinges on having clear priorities. By narrowing your focus, you can allocate resources effectively, monitor progress more closely, and ensure that your team is fully aligned on what matters most. Remember, unclear priorities are among the top reasons why projects fail.
3. De-Biased: Making Better Decisions
Every strategic planning process is vulnerable to bias—whether cognitive (personal beliefs), organizational (company culture), or even emotional. These biases cloud judgment and lead to poor decision-making. Plans that are not based on data-driven insights are often doomed from the start.
To build an effective and executable plan, you must eliminate bias from the process. Ground your decisions in evidence, analytics, and real-world data. Consider using objective tools like market analysis, financial forecasting, and stakeholder feedback to remove the influence of bias. A de-biased approach ensures that your strategy is rooted in reality, improving the likelihood of success while reducing costly missteps.
4. Over-Communicated: The Power of Repetition
Communication is one of the most underestimated aspects of execution. It’s not enough to simply draft a strategic plan and present it once during a team meeting. For execution to succeed, your plan needs to be over-communicated. This means repeatedly sharing the vision, goals, and key actions with all members of the organization until everyone is on the same page.
When employees understand the plan deeply and see how their daily work contributes to its success, they become more engaged and committed to its execution. Effective communication helps break down silos, align departments, and create momentum across the company. A well-communicated plan ensures that every team member, regardless of role, knows what’s expected, reducing confusion and driving collective action.
5. Risk-Mitigated: Navigating the Unexpected
No strategic plan is immune to risk. Every plan comes with uncertainties—whether it’s shifts in the market, economic downturns, or internal challenges like talent gaps. A successful plan is one that proactively identifies and addresses potential risks.
Risk mitigation involves anticipating what could go wrong and developing strategies to manage those risks. By building contingency plans and setting up early warning systems, you can adapt quickly when things don’t go as expected. Proactively addressing risks increases your ability to navigate challenges, avoid costly mistakes, and keep the plan on track.
By embedding risk management into your strategy, you safeguard your execution efforts, ensuring smoother operations and stronger financial performance over the long term.
Bridging the Gap Between Strategy and Execution
Creating a strategic plan is the easy part. The hard part is making it work in practice. Organizations that consistently succeed in executing their plans do so because they embrace these five attributes. They align with stakeholders, prioritize ruthlessly, remove bias, communicate effectively, and manage risk proactively.
Execution isn’t an afterthought—it’s the driving force behind growth. As you finalize your plans for the year ahead, take a step back and ask yourself: How executable is this plan? Have you accounted for these five attributes? If not, take the time to make the necessary adjustments now. Doing so will set your team up for success in 2025 and beyond.
In the end, your strategic plan is only as good as your ability to execute it. By focusing on these core principles, you can bridge the gap between ideas and action, driving meaningful outcomes that fuel your business’s growth and success.
Drew Yancey, PhD is Founder & CEO at Teleios Strategy, a premier strategic planning, leadership development, executive coaching and succession planning advisory firm. With a proven track record in high-performance team building and strategic execution for over 15 years, Yancey solves challenging problems at the nexus of growth, strategy, and innovation. Yancey is also the co-author of “Leading Performance… Because It Can’t Be Managed: How to Lead the Modern Workforce,” and a frequent keynote speaker. Reach him at www.teleiostrategy.com.
