Strategy Isn’t Just for the C-suite: Why everyone should own strategy.
June, 20th, 2025
“Strategy isn’t sacred. It’s a working model for how an organization will win. If the people charged with execution can’t see themselves in it, it won’t stick.”
Too often, strategy is something employees up and down the ranks only hear about, not participate in. It’s delivered as polished slides, maybe at a town hall or in a planning session, filled with directional language and abstract goals. Then the expectation is: Execute.
Now, let’s not marginalize the work that went into that deck - boxes were checked, competitors screened, pre-reads sent, feedback sessions held, ROI and other projections perfectly nestled together in a nice waterfall chart, and no doubt plenty of hours cross-checking existing customer and industry insights or other executives’ pitches for any conflicts. In large corporations, it can get messy and complex real quick - and it’s not for the lack of trying to simplify. It is the nature of the beast. This work is hard.
However, what I think is a miss in strategy formulation is locking it up and away from those who will carry the actual workload in executing the strategy. Employees need more than a run through. They need more than their direct leader walking them through something not even they participated in.
“Hey, can I see the deck you’re talking about?” —- “Sorry, we’re not sharing right now…[which means never].”
I’ve seen what happens when strategy is confined to finance, corporate planning, or a small circle of senior leaders - talking about the non-sensitive and less confidential stuff here, by the way. What gets produced often is a generic set of imperatives any peer in the industry could’ve written or a representation of a portfolio overloaded with individually justifiable initiatives that, in aggregate, fail to matter to the customer or enterprise. Often real progress only comes when capital is intentionally consolidated to remove the big boulders in the customer journey, not just to sweep away the pebbles. The lack of “big bets” in a roadmap is a telling red flag of a lack of a cohesive strategy.
“If you want strategy to stick, then give it a bigger table.”
Mid-level leaders and their teams are often the missing link in this scenario. They’re the ones with the operational context, cross-functional perspective, and closest to the customer and friction. They arbitrate the trade-offs. They see where strategy missed its glide path and how it negatively impacts systems, workflows, and customers. Excluding them from strategy conversations doesn’t just miss an opportunity, it creates a blind spot. It’s where strategic intent quietly mutates into tactical improvisation and a natural drift away from the company’s goals.
A 2022 Harvard Business Review piece emphasized that when strategy is built and communicated in isolation, alignment collapses further down the org. Only 28% of managers in the study could name even three of their company’s strategic priorities (HBR, 2022).
That’s not a communication problem - it’s an inclusion problem.
Organizations that get strategy right treat it as a shared responsibility. They involve mid-level leaders and their teams not just to inform execution plans, but to shape strategic questions. They recognize that real alignment doesn’t come from cascading information - it comes from co-authorship, participation, and a forum where their voices - which can represent the voices of thousands of customers and measurable friction - can be heard and integrated.
BANKDENS’ Strategy Diagnostics recognize the advantage of deeper inclusion in working out strategies for clients. If everyone owns strategy and participates, well that’s half the battle.
