And your team follows the system. Not the strategy on the wall, the one your comp, your pipeline reviews, and your hiring quietly reward instead. This check shows you the widest gap between the two.
The distance between strategy and the field isn't a motivation problem, and it isn't a talent problem. It opens wherever three things are true at once: the strategy is set at the top, the work happens in the field, and nothing reliable connects the two. That third gap is the whole story, and because it's structural, it's fixable by design.
There's no such thing as "execution", only strategy choices made at every level. When nothing carries your strategy down intact, a frontline seller isn't failing to execute. They're making their own call, because no one handed them yours. The fix isn't more pressure. It's a system that operationalizes the strategy so the right calls get made at every altitude.
Most companies aren't broken across all four. Usually it's one clean break, loud enough to drag the whole read down with it.
You're built on long-term accounts. Comp pays on the quarter. The team optimizes for the quarter.
You sell "tailored." Your last five wins are the same deal. That's a product described as a solution, and the margin shows it.
You want disciplined execution. You keep hiring entrepreneurs. The play doesn't travel; it lives in your best rep's head.
You say winning is strategic position. The weekly meeting watches activity. Managers coach what they measure.
A fast, transactional business can be perfectly coherent. A high-touch enterprise one can be a mess. The question isn't which end of the spectrum you're on, it's whether your strategy and your system are pointing the same way. Both ends win when they're aligned. Both leak when they're not.
Eight questions, four about the strategy you intend, four about what your system actually does.
An immediate read: where strategy and system agree, and the one place they pull apart hardest.
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Grounded in Frank Cespedes, Aligning Strategy and Sales (Harvard Business Review Press).