Why Board Strategy Days Drift – And What the Research Actually Says
You sit in a strategy day and feel it long before you can articulate it: the conversation is busy, the decks are polished, but nothing is actually moving. The agenda is full, the language is serious, yet by mid‑afternoon everyone is circling familiar ground. A few months later, most of what was "agreed" has quietly evaporated into BAU. If that feels familiar, you're not alone – and the uncomfortable truth is that the data has been warning us about this pattern for years.
Why I still use "70% of transformations fail"
One of the most quoted statistics in our world is that "roughly 70% of transformations fall short of their objectives."[1] It shows up in board packs, consulting decks, and keynote speeches, often without much context. The version I anchor to comes from BCG's 2024 work on boards and transformation, which found only about 30% of major transformations fully meet their goals – leaving the other 70% underdelivering.[1]
Is that number perfect? No. Earlier versions of the stat trace back to John Kotter's qualitative observations rather than controlled experiments, and academics have rightly pointed out that the 70% figure is more directional than surgically precise.[2] But when different studies over time keep landing in the same ballpark – that a majority of big change efforts don't deliver as intended – it becomes a useful signal, not a courtroom exhibit. In practice, what I see is that when a board assumes "we've now decided, therefore it will happen," it is almost guaranteed to underestimate how quickly that decision will decay once it hits operating reality.
The real problem isn't strategy. It's execution.
Harvard Business Review has been equally blunt on where things go wrong. In a long‑running line of research, HBR authors have argued that around two‑thirds of well‑formulated strategies fail in execution, not design.[3][4] That is, the ideas weren't necessarily bad – they simply never translated into sustained changes in behaviour, resource allocation, and operating rhythm.
For a director, this matters because your experience of a "drifty" strategy day is usually a symptom of this deeper gap. If the day never gets to a small number of non‑negotiable choices, with clear trade‑offs and owners, you're still in the realm of intent – not execution. In practice, what I see is a kind of organisational magical thinking: as long as we can describe the ambition crisply enough, someone else will work out the messy bits later. That "someone else" often doesn't exist.
Boards are shifting from approval to governance
The encouraging news is that boards themselves are naming this gap. In NACD's 2026 Governance Outlook, more than 60% of directors highlighted oversight of strategy execution as a top area for improving their own effectiveness going into 2026.[5] Many boards are increasing the time they spend on strategy in the annual cycle and, importantly, increasing the frequency of strategy‑adjacent conversations between formal meetings.[5]
That shift – from "we approve the strategy once a year" to "we govern how it is lived" – is exactly why I anchor my Board Strategy Day work around a simple spine: Context → Focus → Commitment → Governance. Context so people are working from the same reality, focus so you are not pretending to move eleven things at once, commitment so decisions have owners and dates, and governance so there is a rhythm that keeps those decisions alive. In practice, what I see is that when any one of those four is missing, the day feels good at the time and then quietly unravels afterward.
Why 3–5 strategic imperatives beat "everything important"
Most directors don't need a study to tell them that trying to move ten "top" priorities at once doesn't work. Still, the research is helpful here too. Across multiple strategy and execution studies, a consistent pattern emerges: organisations that concentrate on 3–5 strategic imperatives execute far better than those attempting to progress a long list of initiatives.[6][7][8][9] The exact percentage uplift varies by study, but the direction is remarkably stable.
Those 3–5 imperatives aren't the whole story; they are the spine. Under each imperative, the executive team can then design and sequence the work: programs, projects, and change initiatives that ladder up cleanly. In practice, what I see is that when a board is disciplined at the top of the stack – 3–5 strategic imperatives, clearly articulated – the executive can translate those into, at most, around ten concrete actions for year one that they and their teams can actually hold. That might be a mix of major programs, enabling initiatives, and a couple of critical capability investments – but it is a finite, ownable list.
That's the real leverage point. The board provides direction and clarity – what must shift and why – without sliding into micromanaging the "how". The executive retains ownership of the design and delivery of the underlying work, but you can still see the line of sight from each action back to a strategic imperative. In practice, what I see is that when there are 3–5 imperatives at the top and no more than about ten material actions in year one underneath, three things improve at once: directors can actually oversee progress, executives can actually execute, and people in the organisation can actually explain how their piece fits.
Ownership, cadence, and the 48‑hour signal
The same logic applies to ownership and cadence. Governance practitioners have long argued that clear action logs – with named owners and dates – reduce re‑litigation and help boards see whether decisions are travelling.[10] Recent guidance on governance operating rhythm suggests a simple pattern: monthly conversations are about outcomes; quarterly conversations are about portfolio posture and major bets.[10] That rhythm prevents strategy from becoming an annual event that drifts out of view for eleven months at a time.
Communication benchmarks pull in the same direction. KPI libraries for stakeholder communication routinely point to targets of responses within 24 hours, and comprehensive updates within 48 hours, as a marker of effective governance.[11] For a strategy day, committing to "48‑hour comms on what changed and what's next" is less about hitting an arbitrary standard and more about sending a signal: the board's work in that room has consequences you can see quickly. In practice, what I see is that when there is no explicit commitment on who will say what, to whom, by when, the vacuum gets filled with corridor speculation.
Living with imperfect data (and using it anyway)
None of the sources I've mentioned are flawless. BCG's 70% figure sits in a long lineage of transformation pessimism and is easier to quote than to fully verify.[1][2] HBR's execution‑failure numbers depend on how you define "failure" and over what time horizon.[3][4] The prioritisation research blends board‑level and executive‑team contexts.[6][7][8][9] Even KPI benchmarks are, in the end, human judgement about what "good" looks like.[11]
But data in governance is rarely about courtroom proof. It's about whether the pattern is robust enough – and honest enough – to sharpen judgement rather than seduce it. When I choose to use these sources, it's because they consistently point in the same direction as what you already see in the room:
• Most big ambitions don't fail in the away‑day; they fail in the months after.
• Boards are increasingly expected to govern execution, not just bless strategy.
• Focus, ownership, and cadence beat volume, theatre, and hope.
If you've read this far, you're probably one of the directors who likes to see under the hood – to know that the structure behind a "simple" strategy day has been thought through. This post is for you, and for future‑me: a reference I can point to when someone asks, "Where did that 70% come from?" or "Why are you so insistent on 3–5 imperatives and 48‑hour comms?"
If you are re‑designing your next board strategy day and want to pressure‑test the structure – or just compare notes on what actually makes these days hold in reality – I'm always up for a short, off‑the‑clock co‑think.
References
[1] Seppä, T., Klemmer, D.C., Ramachandran, R. & Abreu, J. (2024). Boards can make or break a transformation. Boston Consulting Group. Retrieved February 16, 2026, from https://www.bcg.com/publications/2024/boards-can-make-or-break-transformation
[2] Hughes, M. (2011). Do 70 per cent of all organizational change initiatives really fail? Journal of Change Management, 11(4), 451-464.
[3] Carucci, R. (2017). Executives fail to execute strategy because they're too internally focused. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved February 16, 2026, from https://hbr.org/2017/11/executives-fail-to-execute-strategy-because-theyre-too-internally-focused
[4] Harvard Business School Online. (2023). 5 reasons strategy execution fails. Retrieved February 16, 2026, from https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/why-do-strategic-plans-fail
[5] van der Oord, F. & Sikora, T. (2025). Boards shift their focus to execution. NACD 2026 Governance Outlook. Retrieved February 16, 2026, from https://www.nacdonline.org/all-governance/governance-resources/governance-research/outlook-and-challenges/2026-governance-outlook/
[6] Harvard Business Review. (2025). Your company needs to focus on fewer projects. Here's how. Retrieved February 16, 2026, from https://hbr.org/2025/08/your-company-needs-to-focus-on-fewer-projects-heres-how
[7] The Strategy Institute. (2025). From strategy to execution: Why even great models fail without alignment. Retrieved February 16, 2026, from https://www.thestrategyinstitute.org/insights/from-strategy-to-execution-why-even-great-models-fail-without-alignment
[8] Duke Corporate Education. (2025). Focus on less to achieve more. Retrieved February 16, 2026, from https://www.dukece.com/insights/focus-on-less-to-achieve-more/
[9] Teelon Growth. (2025). Too many projects, no progress? That's a strategy execution crisis. Retrieved February 16, 2026, from https://teelongrowth.com/articles/too-many-projects-no-progress
[10] Umbrex. (2026). Governance and operating rhythm for corporate strategy. Corporate Strategy Playbook. Retrieved February 16, 2026, from https://umbrex.com/resources/corporate-strategy-playbook/governance-performance-management-and-operating-rhythm/
[11] KPI Depot. (n.d.). Stakeholder communication time. Retrieved February 16, 2026, from https://kpidepot.com/kpi/stakeholder-communication-time