Every strategy document assumes a machine that can execute it. Very few companies describe that machine with the same care they give to the plan itself. The result is a set of intentions that meet an operating reality nobody wrote down.

Where intentions get lost

Work moves through a company as a sequence of hand-offs. Each hand-off is a place where context is dropped, priority is reinterpreted, and time is lost. Strategy survives to the extent that those hand-offs are designed rather than inherited.

The practical test is simple. Take one strategic priority and follow it through four teams. If you cannot name who owns it at each step, the priority is decorative.