Strategic Focus: Prevent Stale Strategies, Wasted Resources & Value Erosion

This interview was originally published in the LeaderEdge newsletter led by Lisa Tromba of Lisa Tromba Associates. Her and I sat down to discuss strategic focus, what leaders often overlook, and how to prevent stale strategies that lead to declining value. The original article can be found on Lisa's website here: https://ltaexecsearch.com/strategic-focus-preventing-stale-strategies-wasted-resources-and-value-erosion/

Read the full LeaderEdge newsletter and connect with Lisa here: https://conta.cc/4joVA2l

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A Candid Conversation — Navigating Uncertainty Through Strategy, Prioritization and Meaningful Momentum

Good strategic focus and prioritization mean using your resources to their highest and best use. Both require a combination of leadership intentions, capabilities, a strong strategy process, and a commitment to execution.

Lacking either of these often leads to value erosion. Let’s discuss how strategic focus and prioritization impact valuation.

I reached out to Nick Cox, founder of HighRidge Strategy, and a former executive in Accenture’s Growth & Corporate Strategy practice to offer his thoughts. Nick helps leadership teams across PE-backed PortCo’s and privately owned middle-market companies overcome stagnating valuations.

With Nick’s experience, I asked him to share his perspective on both strategic focus and prioritization, the theme of this month’s LeaderEdge newsletter. He shared frameworks that lead to strong strategic planning, effective execution—and lasting value creation.

We discussed the impact of “strategic focus and prioritization” on value creation and explored how the two are interdependent. I asked Nick to offer his thoughts on why strategies become static, and importantly, what leadership teams can do to recalibrate and refresh their strategy to get back into meaningful momentum.

Strategic Focus and Prioritization: What Leaders Often Overlook

Nick, we agree, strategic focus and prioritization are different concepts, yet they have a symbiotic relationship. Here’s what I mean. Strategic focus informs priorities, and prioritization keeps strategic focus on track and advancing. We’re talking about both, because one affects the other.

Let’s start with a fundamental question.

How do the leaders you work with typically think about strategic focus and prioritization?  Tell us why this relationship matters.

Right – these concepts are intertwined. Getting either wrong can mean the difference between becoming a market leader and becoming next year’s B-school case study.

Business leaders typically think of strategic focus as the output of a strategic planning process. Many see it as an annual process that looks out 3-5 years. However, for 364 days out of the year, “strategic focus” guides activities against a “plan” that was set in the past.

Focus over time has a compounding effect, but only if the historical context remains unchanged. For most organizations, that context evolves. Prioritization plays a part in strategic focus yet; leaders are more likely to view prioritization as a daily or month-to-month decision, influenced by current realities, events or challenges—often losing sight of the strategic focus. This leads to veering away from strategic priorities and allocating resources toward reactionary tactical plans.

Both strategic focus and prioritization are about choosing—what warrants focus, and how limited resources and time will be allocated to achieve a desired outcome. Increasingly, business landscapes are changing, demanding intentional and constant attention on recalibrating focus, resource allocation, and navigation to the desired outcome.

Where do leaders typically go wrong? The Hidden Cost

Nick, you raise a valid point and challenge for leaders and organizations. This concept of choosing whether to stay the course or shift strategic focus to achieve a desired outcome requires strategic acumen and business reasoning. And the key to succeeding is the ability to prioritize and navigate optimally, and in alignment with the organization’s vision.

Why is this so important and what’s at stake for organizations and their leaders?

For the organization, frayed focus would likely mean customer attrition, zero-return expenses, reduced competitive advantage, disengaged employees, and of course, missing the strategic target. The impact on leaders is equally costly, including elevated stress, decision fatigue, financial strain, and even jeopardized legacies.

In fact, research suggests that 90% of companies fail to execute their strategies successfully. Being able to create and maintain strategic focus, and to adapt it over time is how companies avoid that failure. Executing a strategy requires leaders to be nimble. Recently, I read a research study by S&P Global stating that PE backed bankruptcy filings reached an all-time high in 2024, up 15% YoY.

So, what are your thoughts about what might be contributing to such a shocking statistic?

Acquisition economics and debt play a role, but a changing landscape without processes to evolve the strategy is a recipe for eroding value. Many leaders don’t realize their strategy is stale until symptoms show up.

For instance, new special projects or unexpected pivots chip away at strategic focus. Over time, teams begin to struggle with unclear direction, and competing priorities spread people thinly across misaligned teams.

The fallout is that great talent burns out. In addition, a recurring pattern of “start, stop, pivot” leaves a trail of wasted time, talent, and money on dead projects. That brings us to some of the most common and costly missteps that undermine strategic focus.

Common Missteps

Thanks Nick. Your example is something I’ve seen my clients face, and yes, it’s usually due to reactive versus proactive shifts in focus.

So, it begs the question, what are the common mistakes that leaders and their teams should be aware of to avoid value erosion?

Where we see value eroding or teams stretched thin usually points to one of three common mistakes.

Missteps That Derail Strategic Focus

• Lack of Clarity—No clear focus. Leadership teams simply fail to define or clarify a strategic focus.
• Lack of Alignment—No unified effort. More commonly, organizations don’t ensure the entire team is aligned behind the strategy—rowing together to create positive momentum.
• Lack of Responsiveness—No real-time navigation. Leaders overlook or delay integrating new information as the external environment shifts, leading to frayed focus and ultimately… a stale strategy.

When strategies become stale, tactical prioritization suffers because it’s no longer tied to the bigger picture.

Let me give you an example. One of my clients, a PE-backed consumer goods company was struggling with little progress toward their value creation goals. They were experiencing burnout issues across the organization, in part due to misaligned teams. They brought me in to help clarify their strategic plan and refocus on what truly mattered. Once the C-suite stacked hands on the strategic focus, we got to work.

I asked each leader to write down their top five priorities for the upcoming week. To their own surprise, less than 20% of the priorities noted were tied to defined priorities of the company’s strategic plan.

Reactions from the leadership team ranged from, “Well…I have to do this one thing, even though it isn’t on the strategic plan …and this other thing is already in motion,” to “Our financial sponsor mandated this one, so it’s happening.”

It was clear that the leadership team had defaulted to urgent, legacy, or sponsor-driven tasks that were disconnected from the strategic plan.

The Leadership Discipline: Choosing What Not to Do

Immediately, the light bulbs went off.

It’s about choosing—it’s not enough to align on what you will do. Leaders must also align on what they won’t do.

Here’s what I mean. When Michaelangelo was asked how he created his masterpiece, the statue of David, he said he merely removed everything that didn’t belong.

Your strategic focus demands the same attention. And that same relentless carving away of everything that doesn’t belong has to keep happening 3+, 6+, and 12+ months down the road.

Thanks Nick. That’s an important point. Aligning on what the leadership team and organization won’t do is critical. This is a common dilemma I see as well in organizations where the “shiny new object or opportunity” can quickly shift a leader’s focus without considering the strategic downside. This relates to resource allocation issues, as well as navigating with focus and avoiding distractions that take the leader and team off course.

So, the million-dollar question is, how can leaders strengthen their strategic focus, while remaining appropriately flexible and fluid? And how does an executive know when it’s time to recalibrate?

Please also share with our leadership community, what steps they can follow to demonstrate the necessary discipline to stay on track, and to thoughtfully shift when the situation requires?

When to Strengthen and When to Shift Strategic Focus?

I recommend following a process, and more importantly, choosing a process that works within a changing landscape.

Recently, I attended a panel where Raphael Bostic, President and CEO of the Atlanta Fed, polled the audience of approximately 100 business leaders. About 95 of them reported having a plan as of January 1st. Yet by mid-March, only six of the leaders believed their plan was still relevant. This is a clear example of what many companies face during uncertain times.

Your strategic focus must account for the inevitable “unexpected.” It’s also critical to avoid blindness and spin.

For instance, a rigid strategy is blind to a changing environment, including the new and different risks that come along with change. And at the other end of the spectrum, a lack of focus leads to spin, including being reactive or chasing the shiny new thing.

The way to outsized returns is being able to navigate better than your competition.

At HighRidge Strategy, we’ve adapted tried and true methods to account for navigating the unexpected without abandoning strategic focus. Our process, “CDAN”, builds on a typical three-step process, adding a critical fourth step—one that most strategic planning processes miss entirely. Here are the steps:

1. Clarify your vision, strategic priorities, and outcome targets
2. Decide what you will and won’t do
3. Activate a plan with accountability
4. Navigate new information and developments

I find that many of the methods out there are great at helping leaders with the first three steps: Clarify, Decide, and Activate. But if you’re going to go through the effort of creating a strategy and getting the organization behind it, make sure your process accounts for a changing landscape to avoid a stale strategy and the wasted resources that go along with it.

Strategic and Savvy: Leadership That’s Focused, Flexible and Fluid

Nick, many thanks for sharing your time, expertise and practical examples throughout our excellent discussion.

To summarize, we all need to consistently think ahead of our strategy and our focus—informed by the realities of our current environment. It doesn’t mean our outcome targets must necessarily change, but our tactical priorities might have to shift as we navigate with focus to our targeted destination.

Here are key takeaways:

• Getting to a targeted outcome in the face of uncertainty lies in the art of remaining focused, flexible, and fluid.

• It’s not enough to align on what you will do—leadership teams must also align on what they won’t do.

• Follow key “CDAN” steps to ensure your plan is moving forward with strategic focus, and with the proper prioritization: Clarify, Decide, Activate and Navigate.

Is your strategy earning its keep?

Ask yourself and your team these important questions:

1. Are your priorities protecting, propelling, or poking holes in your strategic focus?
2. What will you do today to ensure you, and your team are operating in alignment with clear strategic focus, and with priorities that serve the end goal?
3. Finally, are you prepared to revisit, recalibrate, and possibly reengineer your navigation plan for value creation for the good of your organization’s valuation?

Thanks to Nick Cox for sharing his time and insights with our LeaderEdge executive community. Please feel free to reach out to Nick with questions you may have, or to become professionally acquainted.

Connect with Nick on Linkedin, or reach out via email to continue the conversation:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/committedtoexcellence/

Email: Nick@HighRidgeStrategy.com

Nick Cox founded HighRidge Strategy to help business leaders across PE-backed PortCo’s and privately owned middle-market companies overcome stagnating valuations using methodologies that work.

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Thanks to Lisa Tromba and LTA for the valueable discussion and opportunity to support the LeaderEdge executive community. LTA is dedicated to connecting, elevating, and advancing leaders and organizations, and bridges the full spectrum of leadership services including: Executive Search, Assessment, Coaching and leadership progression—ensuring contextual alignment for leadership impact at every stage throughout the lifecycle of leadership.

To learn about LTA’s approach and services, visit their websites for additional information. LTAexecsearch.com and LeadershipIntell.com