Some research was conducted into why many strategies seem well conceived but poorly executed. It concluded that whilst many organizations have some success with their strategy, almost nine out of ten organizations failed to fully implement their strategy as they had planned. The first figure in this research suggested that, of all the staff in the organizations involved, only 5 per cent of them understood the strategy.
A different and more recent survey suggested that this figure was around 8 per cent I suspect the different is not significant. This limited understanding of strategy among st its staff is an important issue for an organization. Even if the figures were out by a factor of ten, that means only half know what you are trying to achieve. If only one person in 20 understands your strategy (and presumably that one is executing the strategy) what opportunity are you missing with the other 19? It also raises the question, "whose strategies are the other 19 executing?