The Strategy Dilemma
What Good Is Strategy If You Can’t Execute It?
Everyone wants strategy, but what happens when the strategy can’t actually be implemented? Raja Walia and Andrea Lechner-Becker dig into the disconnect between the people creating big-picture marketing strategies and the people responsible for making them work. From $250,000 consulting engagements to 100+ slide decks, they’ve seen what happens when a great-looking strategy finally lands in the hands of operations and the technology simply can’t do what the deck says it should.
They also tackle a surprisingly difficult question: What does “strategy” even mean? Buyer personas, go-to-market plans, technology decisions, hiring, regional targeting…strategy can mean a lot of things. But Raja keeps coming back to one requirement: you have to be able to execute it. As he puts it, “Vision Without execution is a hallucination.”
Along the way, they talk about the value of consultants who’ve actually been in the trenches, why experience across industries and technologies matters, and yes, the $750,000, 200+ slide strategy deck that resulted in Raja implementing fewer than five slides. Because ultimately, you don’t really know whether a strategy works until you try to implement it.
