Operationally Shaped, Strategically Demanded

Why the system that selects executives for top governance roles systematically fails to develop the very capabilities strategic leadership demands — and what this means for the strategic future-readiness of organisations.

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A recent report on the composition of top governance bodies in listed companies contains a sentence so matter-of-factly worded that one could almost read past it: "No experiments are made at the top of listed companies." The sentence is not intended as criticism. It describes a reality that has proven consistently over three years of observation: experience beats potential. Track record beats curiosity. Operational credibility beats strategic thinking.

One can understand this. Companies listed on capital markets operate under an expectation pressure that rewards reliability and penalises uncertainty. Those appointed to top leadership bodies are there to steer the ship — not to reinvent it. The logic is coherent in itself.

What interests me is the question of what this selection logic does to the leadership systems of organisations over time. And whether the consequences of this logic still fit the world in which these organisations operate today.

87% of new CEOs came from operational front-line roles with P&L responsibility (Witena CEO & Board Report 2025). 67% of all formulated strategies fail not at the analysis stage, but at execution (Harvard Business Review). 21% of leadership teams develop strategies that pass four or more quality criteria (McKinsey Strategy Survey 2025).

The Selection Principle and its Quiet Effect

Whoever is appointed to the executive board of a large organisation has typically proven one thing: the ability to deliver within a defined zone of responsibility. To lead a division. To be accountable for results. To manage complexity without destabilising the system. That is no small achievement — it is an extraordinary one.

But it is an achievement earned in a particular context: a system with clear targets, measurable accountability, and a logic that rewards optimisation. The capabilities developed along the way — focus, decisiveness, reliability, drive — are genuine strengths. They are simply not the same capabilities required when that same system must now find a new strategic direction, hold uncertainty, and collectively make uncomfortable decisions.

"Credibility in corporate Switzerland is earned operationally before it is entrusted strategically."

— Witena CEO & Board Report 2025

This is not a criticism of individual leaders. It is an observation about systemic logic. The system selects for what has worked in the past — and then places those selected individuals before tasks it has not systematically prepared them for.

What Future Readiness Actually Requires

Howard Yu, LEGO Professor at IMD and one of the sharpest strategy thinkers of our time, describes in his research on Future Readiness an observation that fits directly into this picture: future-ready organisations do not win through optimisation of the existing — they win through the willingness to question their own mental models before the market forces them to.

That sounds abstract. It is not. In concrete terms, it means that a leadership team must be able to treat its own success logic as potentially obsolete. That it needs space for questions with no safe answers. That it must develop the capacity to remain capable of action in strategic uncertainty — without prematurely retreating into operational certainty.

This is precisely the capability that a system systematically underserves when it selects exclusively for track record and operational excellence. Not because the people couldn't do it. But because the system has never demanded that they practise it.

The problem is not that executives know too little. The problem is that the system that shapes them trains for certainty — in a world that increasingly demands tolerance for ambiguity.

When Operational Strength Becomes a Strategic Trap

There is a pattern that surfaces consistently in strategy work with leadership teams: teams that excel in the operational world tend to approach strategic processes with operational logic. Define clear goals. Assign accountabilities. Set milestones. What is missing is the preceding phase: the honest wrestling with diagnosis, the holding of divergent perspectives, the formulation of a theory of advantage that genuinely chooses something — and therefore necessarily leaves something else behind.

Roger Martin, arguably the most precise living strategy theorist, has distilled this pattern into a simple test: what most organisations call a strategy is a plan — a list of initiatives that never risk the opposite. A genuine strategic choice, by contrast, must pass one test: would the opposite be stupid? If not, it is not a choice — it is a platitude.

Leadership teams shaped by operational excellence tend to avoid this test. Not from intellectual weakness — but because the system that formed them interpreted ambiguity as a leadership weakness. Clear answers were read as competence. Unanswered questions were read as leadership failure.

"A strategy where the opposite would not be stupid is not a choice. It is a compromise with itself."

— After Roger Martin, Playing to Win

What Neuropsychology Tells Us

This is not a leadership failure. It is neuropsychology.

Neuroscientist Karl Friston (University College London) describes with the concept of Predictive Processing how the brain actually functions: it does not construct reality from what it perceives but from what it expects. New information is only passed forward when it fails to fit the existing model. What has no model is simply not recognised.

Cognitive scientist Andy Clark (University of Edinburgh) puts it plainly: the brain experiences, in a certain sense, the world it expects to experience.

In concrete terms, this means that a leadership brain socialised over years in operational excellence has built no neural patterns for strategic ambiguity. It will therefore neither seek it out nor recognise it, even when it is standing directly in front of it. Not from unwillingness. But because the brain quite literally has no model for it.

The good news: the brain is plastic. It changes through new experiences, shifts in perspective, and situations that pull it out of its prediction patterns. That is precisely the actual task of strategy work, before anyone talks about market opportunities, digital strategies, or AI roadmaps.

The Structural Bottleneck: Not Knowledge, but Context

McKinsey's 2025 research, based on more than 400 companies over five years, shows: the greatest difference between more and less successful strategies does not lie in the quality of analysis. It lies in the mobilisation phase — in the transition from strategic choice to organisational readiness. And this transition succeeds only when the leadership team itself genuinely carries what it has formulated.

This is the real strategic challenge: not to know strategy, but to be strategy. As a team, as a stance, as a shared direction that does not become negotiable under operational pressure. This cannot be learned from a strategy document. It can only be developed through a process that treats the leadership team itself as the object of work — not merely as the client.

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Five questions that create clarity

The following diagnostic is not aimed at individuals – it is aimed at leadership bodies as a system. The questions are uncomfortable. That is intentional.

1. Thinking about your last strategy retreat or board session: what did the body decide together – and what did an external consultancy decide?

Many leadership bodies confuse "we have a strategy" with "we have ordered a strategy." This is not a criticism. It is a structural problem – with direct consequences for implementation.

2. When did your body last give something up – consciously, in favour of something else?

Strategy is prioritisation through sacrifice. Organisations that pursue everything simultaneously have no strategy – they have a list. The capacity for sacrifice is the most precise indicator of a body's strategic maturity.

3. How would you recognise that your company is strategically off course – and how long would it take for that signal to reach you?

Operational systems are optimised for efficiency feedback. They measure what happened yesterday. Strategic risks emerge slowly, peripherally – and are structurally invisible in operational reporting.

4. What are the three most important things your company must do differently in five years than it does today – and what does that change concretely about what you do next week?

If no answer follows, the missing element is not knowledge. It is the bridge between future vision and present action. Without that bridge, every strategy document is decoration.

5. Who in your body has the task of asking these questions at all?

If the answer is "the external consultant" – that is already an answer.

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The Most Uncomfortable Question Last: Who Raises It?

All of the preceding analysis leads to a question that cannot be reasoned away: who in the room actually has the responsibility to raise this?

The external consultant has outside legitimacy. They can say it – without risking their own position. But they have no skin in the game. Whether it is heard depends on whether the system invited them in to name uncomfortable truths – or merely to validate decisions already made.

The other members of the body have relationship, context, and shared responsibility. But they operate within the same power system they need to protect. Who addresses the most powerful person in the room about their blind spot – and what does that cost?

An employee? Theoretically possible. In practice, the selection logic of most systems filters exactly these voices out before they reach the top. Those who see too clearly too early tend to make their careers elsewhere.

This is not cowardice. It is systems logic.

And therein lies the real moral challenge: there is a collective responsibility – but no clear individual accountability. Everyone knows it. No one says it. The system protects itself.

The decisive question, therefore, is not who should raise it.

The decisive question is: what does it say about your system when everyone points the finger away from themselves?