How do you turn strategy into something teams can act on?
Has your strategy been translated into one integrated plan, or is every function running its own version?
A key theme over half of all Executives I interviewed shared, was the lack of collective planning occurring in their organisations, after strategy development. Rather, each business area tended to focus on what naturally sat within its remit, in isolation.
But strategy rarely lives neatly within one function.
Translation is the work of turning strategy into a coherent roadmap of what will be done, by when, and it’s where execution most often breaks down.
Translation is not about drafting next year’s business plan; it’s about looking across the full strategic horizons and setting out the pathway for delivery. That means being clear on what needs to happen, by when, so each function can define what the strategy means for them and identify the capabilities, skills, and resources they’ll need to deliver it.
Without cross-functional translation, interdependencies are missed, and initiatives collide or leave gaps. When done well, translation delivers three things:
• Clarity and alignment on what needs to be true: the conditions, activities, resources, and capabilities required to deliver the strategy.
• A foundation for business planning: informing budgets, resourcing, and priorities around one coherent path.
• A tool for communication: making the strategy easier to explain, share, and connect to people’s daily work.
Andrew MacLennan, one of the few scholars to focus explicitly on strategy translation, describes it as the critical bridge between strategy design and operational delivery. McKinsey’s research also validated this, sharing that organisations that outperform, excel at mobilising execution by creating integrated roadmaps that connect choices to actions.
My research found the same, when organisations invested in translation as a discipline, execution gained pace and alignment deepened. When they didn’t, silos were evident, priorities clashed, and trust in leadership eroded.
Translation gets skipped because it belongs to everyone and nobody. Each function can plan its own part competently, and the plan still won't add up. Building the one integrated pathway, across horizons rather than across a financial year, is what Strategic Planning is for.
So, what can organisations do differently?
- Define translation as a discipline: it’s not a nice to do, it’s the bridge between ambition and action.
- Start with shared understanding: ensure leaders have the same picture of success and what’s in or out of scope
- Define the pathway logic: clarify how choices connect to outcomes, to initiatives and activities, this uncovers the conditions, enablers, and sequencing.
- Look across horizons: go beyond the annual plan and set a pathway across each strategic horizon and what must be achieved to unlock each horizon.
Translation turns strategy from intent into a system people can own and deliver.
This is part of lever 2 (Strategic Clarity & Alignment) of the Strategy Execution by Design Model. See the full framework →
Not sure which of the seven conditions is holding your execution back? Take the Strategy Execution Maturity Model Assessment →
Written by Rebecca Reti, strategy and execution consultant working with boards and executive teams across Australia and New Zealand.