Stop Forcing Strategy Downstream: How to Make People Actually Care

Most strategies don’t fail in the boardroom. They fail in the space between the slide deck and the people asked to bring it to life.

Leaders love to blame “execution gaps,” “communication issues,” or the classic: “Our people just don’t get it.”

But here’s the truth, clear as daylight and twice as uncomfortable: People don’t resist strategy. They resist being handed something that feels disconnected from their reality.

You can’t cascade clarity from the top if the strategy wasn’t built with the organization’s actual heartbeat in the room.

And yet… we keep trying.

Strategy Isn’t a Broadcast. It’s a Contact Sport.

Too many organizations treat strategy like an elite sport only executives are allowed to play. They craft it beautifully, boldly, and often brilliantly, in rooms far from the noise of frontline reality.

Then they send it downstream like a memo in a bottle and hope people will magically rally behind it.

That’s not strategy activation. That’s wishful thinking with a corporate letterhead.

But.......If strategy feels theoretical to the people doing the work, it is theoretical. And theoretical strategy never survives its first collision with the real world.

The Real Villain: Disconnection, Not Disinterest

Most employees want to contribute. They want to win. They want to know that their daily decisions and energy matter.

But when a strategy shows up that doesn’t speak to their constraints, their customers, their workload, or their lived experience, they tune out. Not because they’re resistant, but because it feels like fiction.

You know that moment when a strategy slide says something like…

📌 “Increase customer centricity.” 

📌 “Drive operational excellence.” 

📌 “Accelerate digital maturity.”

…and everyone wonders, “Okay, but what does that actually mean on Tuesday at 3pm?”

That’s the gap. That’s the moment your strategy quietly dies.

The Counterintuitive Fix: Stop Pushing Strategy Outward. Pull Reality Inward.

The leaders who get this right do something radically simple: They design strategy with the people closest to the work; not after them.

Here’s the pattern I see in organizations that consistently deliver:

1) Strategy co-creation, not strategy announcement.

Not everyone gets a seat in the boardroom. Fair. But everyone gets a voice through structured listening, signal gathering, and frontline insight loops.

The best strategies are mosaics, not monologues.

2) Translate strategy into behavior....early.

If you can’t finish this sentence, you don’t have a strategy yet: “Here’s what this means for how we work differently tomorrow.”

People don’t activate PowerPoints. They activate behaviors, decisions, priorities, and tradeoffs.

3) Give teams the pen.

You share the “north star” and the boundaries. They translate it into workflows, rituals, and local practices.

Ownership isn’t created by communication. Ownership is created by authorship.

When You Stop Gripping, People Move

The strategy paradox is beautifully human:

The more tightly leaders hold the strategy, the less the organization can carry it.

The moment you create space, the system breathes, and people step into it.

When teams feel seen, included, and trusted, something ancient wakes up in them: agency, courage, creativity, and the instinct to make things better than they found them.

That’s what activates strategy. Not slogans. Not cascades. Not mandatory workshops.

A living, breathing connection between vision and reality built together.

The Bottom Line

Stop pushing strategy downstream and hoping people will care. Bring people upstream and watch the strategy come alive.

Because strategy doesn’t fail in execution. It fails in isolation.

And the organizations that win next? They’ll treat strategy as a shared act of creation; not a corporate broadcast.