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

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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What This Means for Strategic Facilitation

The implication is relevant for anyone who takes strategy work seriously: it is not enough to supply a leadership team with better analysis, smarter frameworks, or more current market data. That does not address the actual bottleneck.

What is required is a process that enables the leadership team to do the work itself — under conditions that correspond to the context in which that team operates: under time pressure, with divergent perspectives, with unresolved power dynamics that are never surfaced in day-to-day business.

The report that prompted this essay closes with a sentence that, on first reading, looks like a confirmation of the status quo: "Top management remains an area where experiments are rare and proof of performance is decisive." I read it differently. As a description of a gap that is not getting smaller — and that can be deliberately addressed by those leadership teams willing not to assume their own strategic capacity, but to intentionally develop it.

Five questions that create clarity

The following diagnostic is not directed at individuals — it is directed at leadership teams as a system. The questions are uncomfortable. That is intentional.

1. Thinking about your last strategy retreat or planning session: what did the leadership team decide collectively — and what did an external consultancy decide?

Many leadership teams confuse «we have a strategy» with «we commissioned a strategy». This is not a criticism. It is a structural problem — with direct consequences for execution.

2. Ask each member of your leadership team individually: what do we mean by digital transformation — and what do we explicitly not mean? How many different answers do you get?

Strategic coherence does not begin with a document. It begins with a shared picture. Without that picture, every member works from their own mental map — and the organisation moves in several directions simultaneously.

3. When did your leadership team last give something up — deliberately, in favour of something else?

Strategy is prioritisation through sacrifice. Organisations that pursue everything simultaneously do not have a strategy — they have a list. The capacity for deliberate sacrifice is the most precise indicator of a team's strategic maturity.

4. How would you know if your organisation was 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.

5. What are the three most important things your organisation must do differently in five years' time — and what does that change concretely about what you do next week?

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

That, as I see it, is the real investment in the future — before any conversation about market opportunities, digital strategies, or AI roadmaps.