Why Strategy People Need to Evolve
By Lisa Carlin, Strategy Execution Specialist
The best Strategy People I know aren’t the ones with the most impressive frameworks. They’re the ones who get things done.
I’m talking about strategy experts, strategy professionals, strategy consultants, strategy managers, and those business unit managers who are developing strategy as part of their day job. Let’s call them Strategy People.
After working alongside strategy professionals across 50+ implementations, and inside several different global famous consultancies, I’ve noticed a pattern. Many Strategy People are brilliant at analysis but struggle with execution. They can diagnose organizational challenges with surgical precision but can’t mobilize people to solve them. The future belongs to Strategy People who bridge the gap between insight and impact.
The Strategy Ivory Tower Problem
Traditional Strategy People operate like analysts: they analyze, recommend, and retreat. They produce beautiful PowerPoints with compelling logic, then wonder why nothing changes. This approach worked when business moved slowly and change was episodic. In today’s environment, it’s a recipe for irrelevance.
I recently worked with a strategy team that spent three months developing a perfect analysis. Their insights were brilliant. Their recommendations were sound. But by the time they presented to leadership, conditions had shifted, and the CEO had moved on to more pressing priorities.
Strategy people who want to remain valuable need to evolve from advisors to orchestrators of change.
The Human Challenge of Strategic Work
Here’s what most Strategy People miss: organizations don’t execute strategies, people do. And people are messy, emotional, politically–motivated beings who don’t always make rational decisions. In fact, if you ask Dr Robert Cialdini, who I think of as the Godfather of Persuasion, he would say that business decisions are made emotionally and then justified by logic afterwards.
You can have the most elegant strategic framework in the world, but if it doesn’t account for human psychology, organizational politics, and cultural dynamics, it’s just expensive wall art.
The Strategy People who create lasting impact understand that their job isn’t just to develop strategies, it’s to develop strategies that people can and will execute.
Three Evolution Areas for Modern Strategy People
1. From Analysis to Facilitation
Traditional strategy work is heavily analytical. Modern strategy work requires facilitation skills. Instead of developing strategies in isolation (what I call the “dark room”), effective Strategy People involve stakeholders in the strategic thinking process.
This isn’t about diluting strategic rigor, it’s about building strategic buy-in. When people participate in developing the strategy, they understand it better and commit to it more deeply.
I’ve seen Strategy People transform their effectiveness by learning to facilitate strategy workshops in a Culture-Friendly way. They become orchestrators of collective intelligence instead of only developing strategic insights.
2. From Planning to Adaptation
Modern Strategy People need to be comfortable with ambiguity, rapid iteration, and continuous learning. A set-and-forget 10 year strategy is no longer relevant. We need to design strategies that can evolve as conditions change.
This requires a mindset shift from rigid plans to adaptive scenarios. Instead of predicting the future, modern Strategy People create frameworks for responding to multiple possible futures.
3. From Recommendation to Implementation
The most valuable Strategy People don’t just develop strategies, they make them inherently, implementable. They understand project management, change management, and organizational development. They can translate strategic concepts into operational reality.
This doesn’t mean Strategy People need to become project managers. It means they need to understand how their strategic work connects to execution challenges and design strategies that are implementable, not just intellectually sound.
The Integration Imperative
The future belongs to Strategy People who can integrate three perspectives:
Strategic Thinking: Understanding competitive dynamics, market trends, and organizational capabilities
Change Leadership: Engaging stakeholders, building support, and managing resistance
Execution Excellence: Connecting strategy to operations, navigating culture, and adapting based on results
When Strategy People develop competence across all three areas, they become indispensable to organizational success.
Moving Beyond Best Practices
I’m increasingly skeptical of “best practice” approaches to strategy work. What works brilliantly in one organization often fails spectacularly in another because organizational cultures, market conditions, and competitive dynamics are different.
Effective Strategy People don’t apply fixed frameworks, they adapt templates to suit the context. They understand that the process of strategy development needs to fit the organization’s culture, the timeline needs to match the pace of change in their industry, and the implementation approach needs to work with available resources and capabilities.
The Communication Revolution
Traditional Strategy People speak in strategy language and management speak. But most organizational stakeholders don’t think in these terms. They think about customers, operations, people, and problems they need to solve.
Strategy people who want to create impact need to become translators. They need to express strategic concepts in language that resonates with different audiences. The same strategic insight might be communicated one way to the CEO, another way to operational managers, and a third way to frontline staff.
From Individual Contributor to System Builder
The most effective Strategy People I work with don’t only develop strategies, they build organizational capability for strategic thinking. They create processes, tools, and frameworks that help others think strategically about their own areas of responsibility.
Instead of being the sole source of strategic insight, they become multipliers who enhance the strategic capacity of the entire organization. This approach creates more impact. It also counter-intuitively positions Strategy People as essential to long-term organizational success.
The Culture-Friendly Strategy Professional
Traditional strategy work often ignores organizational culture. Modern Strategy People understand that culture isn’t a constraint to work around, it’s a resource to leverage.
Culture-Friendly Strategy People study their organization’s cultural strengths and design strategies that build on those strengths while gradually developing new capabilities and behaviours that are more useful to the organization’s future. They understand that sustainable strategic change requires cultural evolution, not just operational adjustment.
Dealing with Strategy Fatigue
Many organizations suffer from strategy fatigue (sometimes called change fatigue): too many strategic initiatives, too much complexity, too little progress. Strategy people often contribute to this problem by treating every challenge as requiring a new strategy, a new framework.
Effective Strategy People know when to add strategy and when to simplify. Sometimes the organization needs new direction. Sometimes it needs better execution of existing direction. And often it needs to stop doing things that aren’t working.
The AI Augmentation Opportunity
Generative AI and other emerging technologies offer Strategy People unprecedented opportunities to enhance their effectiveness. I use AI to accelerate and iterate research, generate alternative scenarios, synthesize stakeholder feedback, and create more tailored communications.
I have found that AI is so useful in developing more creative ideas, amplifying strategic thinking. Strategy people who learn to leverage these tools while maintaining their human judgment and relationship skills will have significant advantages over those who don’t. See my newsletter article for more: Strategy, AI and the Future.
Building Your Strategy Professional Portfolio
Modern Strategy People need diverse skills that go beyond traditional strategic analysis:
Facilitation Skills: Can you guide groups through complex problem-solving processes?
Change Leadership: Can you build coalitions and manage resistance to strategic changes?
Communication Mastery: Can you translate strategic concepts for different audiences?
Implementation Understanding: Do you know how strategies get executed in your organization?
Cultural Intelligence: Can you adapt your approach to organizational culture?
AI and Technology Fluency: Are you leveraging AI and digital tools to enhance your strategic work?
The Future of Strategy Work
Strategy people who thrive in the coming decade will be those who understand that their value isn’t in having all the answers, it’s in asking better questions, facilitating better conversations, and creating better conditions for strategic success.
They’ll be comfortable with ambiguity, skilled at collaboration, and focused on implementation. They’ll understand that their role isn’t to be the smartest person in the room, it’s to make the room smarter.
Your Strategy Professional Assessment
Before your next strategic project, honestly assess your current approach:
Engagement Level: Are you developing strategies with people or for people?
Implementation Focus: Do you consider execution challenges during strategy development?
Communication Effectiveness: Can different stakeholders explain your strategies in their own words?
Cultural Alignment: Do your strategies work with your organization’s culture?
Change Skills: Can you help people navigate the human side of strategic change?
Adaptation Capacity: Are your strategies designed to evolve as conditions change?
The strategy profession is evolving rapidly. Strategy people who embrace this evolution will find themselves at the center of organizational success. Those who cling to traditional approaches risk becoming expensive anachronisms.
The question isn’t whether you’re a good strategy person by yesterday’s standards. The question is whether you’re becoming the kind of strategy person your organization needs for tomorrow’s challenges.
Lisa Carlin is a Strategy Execution Specialist based in Sydney, Australia. Her insights are based on research and experience leading or advising on 50+ implementations. She specializes in developing strategy professionals who create lasting organizational impact.
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