In Part 1 - “Why strategy gets lost in execution” - I argued that strategy fails at translation: The thinking is usually sound; the breakdown comes at handoff, interpretation, and adaptation.
This article is about what actually helps. It's about designing for translation rather than hoping alignment will happen on its own.
This is not about better communication, more documents, or individual heroics. Those are the usual responses, and they rarely work.
Why "better communication" is the wrong solution
When strategy fails to land, organisations reach for familiar tools: more decks, clearer messaging, cascades, town halls.
The logic seems sound. If people don't understand, explain it again. Explain it better. Explain it louder.
But communication is one-way. Broadcasting intent is not the same as ensuring understanding.
Clarity at the top does not guarantee coherence in execution. You can have a beautifully articulated strategy that makes perfect sense in the boardroom and means almost nothing by the time it reaches someone's Monday morning.
The problem isn't volume or quality of communication. The problem is that translation requires something communication alone can't provide: interpretation, adaptation, and feedback.
Translation is a design problem
If the gap between strategy and execution is structural - and it is - then closing it requires structural solutions.
What's needed are explicit translation mechanisms: structures, rituals, roles, and artefacts that exist specifically to bridge between layers. Without them, translation happens anyway, but inconsistently, informally, and often incorrectly.
If translation isn't designed, it will be improvised. And improvisation varies wildly depending on who's doing it.
Designing for translation across the three gaps
In Part 1, I described three dimensions where translation fails: perspective, ways of working, and language. Each requires its own kind of connective tissue.
Perspective: making intent visible at every level
Strategy needs to be interpretable, not just articulated.
Senior leadership often assumes that stating the strategy clearly is enough. It's not. Each layer of an organisation needs to understand how the strategy applies to their work; not just what it says, but why it matters from where they sit.
This doesn't mean giving everyone the same view. Different roles need different facets of the same truth. What matters is that each view is meaningful and connected to the decisions people actually make.
Useful mechanisms here include shared framing artefacts that cascade through levels, explicit trade-offs that explain what the organisation is choosing not to do, and visible decision logic that shows how strategic priorities translate into operational choices.
The goal is not alignment through obedience. It's alignment through understanding. If people can see how their work moves the strategic dial, they'll make better decisions, without needing to be told what to do.
Ways of working: connecting rhythms without forcing uniformity
Strategy thinks in years and quarters. Execution works in weeks, days, or hours. This will always be true. The goal is not synchronisation, but connection.
What's needed are intentional moments where intent and reality meet.
This might look like regular strategy reviews that happen in the context of delivery, not separate from it. It might look like feedback loops that carry information from execution back to strategy, not just the other way around. It might look like deliberate pauses to recalibrate when circumstances change.
The key insight is this: strategy needs to be reviewed in the same place it's being tested. If strategic thinking only happens in the boardroom and delivery only happens in the backlog, the two will drift apart. You need touch-points where both perspectives are present at the same time.
This doesn't require elaborate rituals. Sometimes a lightweight, cross-tier check-in is enough, provided it's genuinely two-way and happens regularly enough to matter.
Language: creating shared meaning without flattening expertise
Every layer develops its own vocabulary. This is efficient within groups but creates barriers across them.
The answer is not to force everyone to speak the same language. Specialised language exists because it's useful. Flattening it would slow everyone down.
Instead, the goal is to make assumptions explicit, test understanding, and translate terms across contexts.
One powerful mechanism is playback: having people articulate what they think something means in their own context, then checking whether that interpretation holds. "Here's what I think this means for us - have I got that right?" This simple practice catches misunderstandings before they compound.
Another is creating shared reference points; not a glossary of jargon, but a living document that explains key terms in plain language. This helps people navigate across boundaries without needing to become experts in someone else's domain.
The goal is not perfect linguistic alignment, but a shared meaning - enough mutual understanding that intent can travel between layers without getting lost.
Ownership: who holds the translation?
Strategy is owned. Delivery is owned. Translation sits awkwardly in between.
This is often the missing piece. Someone is accountable for setting the strategy. Someone is accountable for executing the work. But who is accountable for ensuring the two remain connected?
In most organisations, the answer is "nobody explicitly." Translation happens informally through capable middle managers, proactive team leads, or senior people who happen to care about coherence. When it works, it's because of individuals, not design.
This is fragile.
What helps is creating a deliberate translation capability - not necessarily a job title, but a recognised function. Someone (or a small group) whose role is to maintain coherence between strategy and execution: ensuring intent is understood, spotting where breakdown is happening, and facilitating recalibration when needed.
This role doesn't decide the strategy. It doesn't deliver the work. It holds the connection between them.
In practice, this might be fractional - either a part of someone's broader responsibilities, or an external, fractional consultant - rather than a full-time position. What matters is that the function exists, that it's explicitly owned, and that the person holding it has access to strategic, operational and delivery contexts.
What leaders need to do differently
Translation mechanisms help. But they only work if leadership creates the conditions for them.
This is less about tasks and more about behaviour.
It means asking different questions. Not just "Is this clear?" but "What assumptions are we making?" Not just "Did you receive this?" but "Where is this breaking down in practice?"
It means creating space for challenge, feedback, and reinterpretation. If strategy is handed down as fixed and final, there's no room for translation, only compliance.
It also means accepting that strategic clarity is provisional. The strategy that made sense six months ago may need adjustment today. Leaders who treat strategy as permanent rather than adaptive make translation harder, because they close off the feedback loops that keep strategy connected to reality.
The role of leadership is not to author documents that cascade downward. It's to steward coherence across the organisation, ensuring that intent and action remain aligned even as circumstances change.
Strategy that survives contact with reality
The gap between strategy and execution never fully disappears. The goal is to manage it actively and to design for translation rather than leaving it to chance.
Organisations that do this well don't eliminate friction entirely. But they adapt faster, with less confusion and less blame. When something breaks, they can see where it broke and why. When context shifts, they can recalibrate without starting over.
Strategy doesn't fail because it's poorly conceived. It fails because it's poorly connected to the work that's supposed to deliver it.
Close that gap deliberately, and strategy stops being something that exists in documents. It becomes something that lives in decisions, in priorities, and in daily work.
This is the final part of a two-part series on bridging the gap between strategy and execution.
Ady Coles works with leadership teams to help strategy survive contact with reality. His focus is on strategy management and agile strategy delivery - designing the translation between intent and execution so that direction remains coherent as organisations move, grow, and adapt. He works as a fractional and advisory partner where clarity, judgement, and sustained alignment matter more than plans on paper.