Strategy Is Completed in the Middle

Many strategies fail quietly. The Board approves them. Senior leaders launch them. The document is circulated. Then, amid urgent routines, competing demands and limited resources, the strategy gradually becomes a report rather than a shared way of working.

The central execution question is not whether leaders can describe the plan. It is whether people in the middle of the institution can connect its purpose to what they must decide, stop, prioritise, measure and improve this week. Strategy is not completed in the boardroom. It is completed in the daily judgement of programme leaders, pastors, administrators, supervisors, first-line managers and team members.

New research published in 2026 provides helpful evidence. A study of 421 teams found that meaning-based leadership was associated with strategy implementation through team value alignment: teams were better able to implement strategy when their leaders connected daily work to the organisation's values-based purpose. The study is drawn from one energy company, so it should not be treated as a universal formula. Its lesson nevertheless travels: people execute with greater commitment when they understand why a priority matters and how their work serves it.

This is more demanding than motivational language. It asks the senior leader, middle leader and team leader to carry a coherent line of sight from mission to task. Where leaders at different levels interpret the purpose differently, people receive mixed…