Strategy Isn’t Just for the C-suite: Why mid-level leaders should be engaged.

June, 13th, 2025

Too often, strategy is something mid-level leaders 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 insights or other executives’ pitches for any conflicts vis a vis the recommendations.

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.

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. The need more than their direct leader walking them through something not even they participated in.

I’ve seen what happens when strategy is locked inside finance, corporate strategy teams, or a select set of senior leaders. What gets produced isn’t strategy - it’s, at its worst, a reverse-engineered story built to justify what’s already happening. I’ve seen strategic portfolios overloaded with individually good ideas that didn’t add up to anything meaningful for the actual customer —> the medicine that was needed was a strategy that acknowledged that funding was always required (annually) to sweep away the pebbles in the customer journey (call it tech and experience debt), but what was going to move the needle was a consolidation of capital investments into moving the big rocks and boulders.

Mid-level leaders 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.

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 will not stick.

The organizations that get this right treat strategy as a shared responsibility. They involve mid-level leaders 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.

If you want strategy to live beyond the deck, give it a bigger table.