The Strategy Abyss: Where Decisions Lose Their Meaning

Most strategies don’t fail because they are wrong. They fail because, somewhere between decision and delivery, their meaning is lost.

The organisation doesn’t reject the strategy; it just didn’t own or understand it. This is what we call the strategy abyss. It’s not a gap in planning or execution, but a gap in understanding.

The illusion of completion.

In many organisations, strategy feels complete once a decision has been made.

• The direction is agreed.
• The priorities are set.
• The deck is shared.

From that point on, attention moves quickly to delivery. Action becomes the visible signal of progress. Thinking is quietly deprioritised.

But what has really happened is that management has often decided, and the team meant to implement it is then left to act, often with different interpretations and levels of understanding.

Where the abyss actually sits.

The strategy abyss is not the space between strategy and execution. It is the space between a decision being made and being well understood enough to guide judgment under pressure.

Most organisations bypass this space, believing it is smaller than it is, mistaking:

• Communication for understanding.
• Agreement for ownership.
• Momentum for coherence.

For small strategic changes, this can and does work; for larger, more complex strategic initiatives, though, it is bound to fail, and under pressure, it implodes. 

Pressure reveals what was never owned.

When times get tough, and resources are in short supply, when targets wobble, and markets shift, organisations don’t abandon strategies they own, just those they never fully bought into.

They revert back to:

• familiar habits
• internal narratives
• activity that feels productive, even if counter to the strategy.

This isn’t because people are disobedient or cynical. It’s because, in the absence of shared understanding, people rely on what they believe to be true.

The strategy hasn’t failed. It simply hasn’t been internalised deeply enough to hold.

Why don’t documents cross the abyss?

The strategy abyss cannot be bridged by documents alone because a strategy that exists primarily in a slide deck, a shared folder or the head of the leadership team, will always be fragile.

When judgment is required, and strategy only really delivers when judgment is needed, people default to what they understand and believe in, not what was announced.

This is why strategies that appear coherent on paper often fall apart in practice. The decision was made, but the rationale behind it was never clear to everyone who needed to know.

How the abyss is created in the first place.

The strategy abyss rarely arises by accident; organisations unintentionally design it into the process from the outset.

This is because most strategies are still formed on one side of an organisational divide.

• Boards and executive teams decide.
• Others are expected to implement.

This may be how it has always been done, but this is what creates separation, as strategy is imposed on the organisation rather than formed with it.

Picture this as a river…

On one bank sits the senior leadership team, setting direction, making decisions, and debating trade-offs. On the other side of the river stand those who will live with the consequences, interpreting, prioritising, and making daily decisions in the face of real constraints.

Over time, the river continues to erode the ground between them. The gap widens, and assumptions harden, and language drifts. What was once a manageable crossing becomes an abyss.

When the strategy is finally handed over, leaders try to build a bridge after the fact - usually in the form of documents, cascades, or town halls. But bridges built late are fragile and more often than not one-way.

Real ownership is created when the bridge is built early and used in both directions.

That means involving those who will implement the strategy from the beginning and as it is being shaped, not once it has been finalised. It involves inviting challenge, addressing practical constraints, and allowing understanding to develop alongside decision-making.

In Thinking in Fields terms, this is what we refer to as the Ownership Team: a deliberately mixed group that crosses the river early, participates in shaping intent, and then walks back prepared, carrying not just instructions, but with buy-in and understanding.

And when that happens, the river remains a river. A boundary that can be crossed. Not a canyon that is an abyss that must be shouted across once it’s too late.

Ownership as the bridge

The only reliable bridge across the strategy abyss is ownership. Not just ownership of tasks or plans, but ownership of meaning because ownership exists when people can:

• explain why this strategy was chosen
• articulate the trade-offs it implies
• recognise what no longer makes sense to do
• and make consistent decisions without constant escalation

This takes time. It requires conversation, not broadcast and interrogation, not instruction. It is quieter and has a longer burn time than action and, therefore, is often undervalued. But it dramatically increases the chances of success, so why ignore it?

Why the abyss keeps widening

Ironically, the more pressure an organisation feels, the more likely it is to widen the strategy abyss unless there is actual ownership. Without ownership…

• Thinking is seen as a delay.
• Reflection is mistaken for indecision.
• Requests for clarity are treated as resistance.

Strategic action is visible. Strategic thinking is misread as procrastination.

So, organisations push forward, faster, louder, harder, all whilst drifting away from the very reasoning that they thought would help them.

Strategy is not the move.

This is why it’s dangerous to define strategy purely by the actions it produces.

• Strategic moves can be the wrong moves.
• Documents created are often never read.
• Language decreed is often ignored.

But a strategy that is understood, owned, and lived is much harder to ignore, and that kind of strategy is not imposed; it is ingrained.

It is a cultivated strategy.

Closing thought

The strategy abyss is rarely acknowledged because it sits in an uncomfortable place.

• Too early to measure.
• Too late to ignore.
• Invisible until pressure exposes it.

But once you see it, you start to notice something else that most organisations don’t need better strategies - They need fewer decisions, held more deeply.

That is slower work. Quieter work. But it is the work that allows strategy to survive contact with reality.