Scholars like Donald Sull describe strategy not as a single event but as a continuous process consisting of making sense of issues, making choices, making things happen, and making tough changes along the way. I agree with this framing, and I often challenge my clients and students to think about the anatomy of strategy. The quality of the heads in the room shapes strategic analysis. The strength and alignment of the hands on the drawing board shape strategy development. The agility of the legs in the field determines the success of execution. And ultimately, it is the liver – as we say in Nigeria – the courage to learn, adapt, and make difficult changes that determines whether strategy improves or becomes obsolete.
Seen this way, strategy is not just a document or a retreat exercise; it is a leadership capability distributed across the organisation and across the entire strategy life cycle. From analysis to development, from implementation to monitoring and improvement, the depth of leadership and managerial competence at multiple levels determines whether strategy translates into results. Organisations that concentrate strategic thinking at the top while leaving interpretation and execution to underprepared managers create a structural weakness in their strategy process.
First, the quality of the heads in the room determines the quality of strategic analysis. Strategic analysis is not merely about collecting data or producing reports; it is fundamentally about sensemaking and judgement. George Day and Paul Schoemaker, writing in MIT Sloan Management Review on visionary leadership, argue that effective organisations cultivate leaders who can scan the environment, interpret weak signals, and challenge dominant assumptions. This capability cannot reside only with the executive team. Managers across functions and levels are often closest to customers, operations, and emerging risks. When they lack analytical and strategic thinking skills, organisations misread their environment, underestimate threats, and overestimate opportunities.
Second, the alignment of the hands on the drawing board determines the strength of strategy development. Strategy formulation is frequently treated as a top-management exercise, yet research in the strategy-as-practice field, including the work of Rouleau, Balogun, and Floyd, shows that middle managers actively shape strategy through interpretation, synthesis, and translation of strategic intent. When managerial voices are fragmented or excluded, strategy development becomes a collection of functional preferences rather than an integrated organisational direction. Strong managerial capability at this stage enables constructive debate, realistic planning, and alignment around trade-offs.
Third, the agility of the legs in the field determines the success of execution. This is where strategy most visibly succeeds or fails. Rebecca Homkes’ work on strategy execution highlights that managers are not passive implementers; they are interpreters of strategy. They translate high-level intent into operational priorities, allocate resources, resolve cross-functional tensions, and guide teams through competing demands. If managers lack execution discipline, prioritisation skills, and strategic clarity, initiatives multiply, focus weakens, and momentum is lost. Many organisations assume that communicating a strategy is sufficient for execution, but research and experience suggest otherwise. Strategy travels through layers of managerial judgement, and weak managerial capability distorts that transmission. In practice, strategy does not execute itself; it moves on the legs of capable managers across the organisation.
“Analytical competence strengthens diagnosis, collaborative leadership improves design, managerial discipline drives execution, and adaptive courage sustains improvement.”
Finally, the liver to learn, adapt, and make difficult changes determines whether the strategy improves over time. Monitoring and improvement are often reduced to performance dashboards and review meetings, but a sustainable strategy requires a culture of learning and adaptation. Amy Edmondson’s research on psychological safety and learning from failure shows that organisations perform better when leaders create environments where managers can surface problems, question assumptions, and experiment without fear of blame. In such cultures, failure becomes a source of insight rather than a stigma. This is where “liver”, in the Nigerian sense of courage, becomes a strategic capability. It reflects the willingness to confront uncomfortable evidence, abandon underperforming initiatives, and make tough adjustments even after significant investments have been made.
Taken together, these four metaphors reveal a deeper managerial truth: strategy is not a leadership speech but a leadership system. Donald Sull’s lifecycle view of strategy aligns with a growing body of research showing that leadership and managerial capabilities must be embedded across all stages of the strategy process. Analytical competence strengthens diagnosis, collaborative leadership improves design, managerial discipline drives execution, and adaptive courage sustains improvement.
This has profound implications for how organisations approach capability building. Many invest heavily in strategy retreats, planning frameworks, and external advisory support, yet underinvest in developing managerial capability across the organisation. They expect strategic agility, disciplined execution, and continuous improvement from managers who have not been systematically equipped with strategic thinking, coordination, and learning skills. The result is not a failure of strategy but a failure of capability development and distribution.
If organisations truly want to close the gap between strategy and results, they must treat leadership and managerial development as a strategic priority rather than as an afterthought. Strategic analysis requires thoughtful and visionary leaders. Strategy development requires aligned and integrative managers. Execution requires disciplined and capable operational leadership. Monitoring and improvement require adaptive leaders with the courage to learn and adjust. No one is born with these capabilities – they must be taught, learned and nurtured through focused leadership and management development initiatives.
Omagbitse Barrow is the Chief Executive of Efiko Management Consulting and works with organisations and leaders to translate their strategy to results.
