The Idea in Brief

It’s commonly held that strategy is distinct from execution, but this is a flawed assumption. The idea that a strategy can be brilliant and its execution poor is simply wrong.

The metaphor accompanying this viewpoint is that of the human body, with the brain as the “chooser” and the body as the “doer.” Translated into the workplace, the executive at the top dictates the strategy and expects everyone below him to mechanically carry it out.

A better metaphor is that of a white-water river, where choices cascade from the top to the bottom. In a company, those in charge make broader and more abstract “upstream” choices, and employees downstream are empowered to make choices that best fit the situation at hand. This results in happier customers and more-satisfied employees.

To best enable individual decisions, choice makers upstream should set the general context for those downstream. From there, employees need to use good judgment to make the best decisions possible. The authors detail four ways those at the top can help.

The idea that execution is distinct from strategy has become firmly ensconced in management thinking over the past decade. So much so, in fact, that if you run a Google search for “A mediocre strategy well executed is better than a great strategy poorly executed,” you will get more than 42,600 references. Where the idea comes from is not certain, but in 2002, in the aftermath of the dot-com bubble, Jamie Dimon, now CEO of JPMorgan Chase, opined, “I’d rather have a first-rate execution and second-rate strategy any time than a brilliant idea and mediocre management.” In the same year, Larry Bossidy, former AlliedSignal CEO, coauthored the best-selling book Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, in which the authors declared, “Strategies most often fail because they aren’t well executed.”

A version of this article appeared in the July–August 2010 issue of Harvard Business Review.