A Strategy Is Not Implemented Until the Routine Changes

A governing body approves a strategy. Leaders launch it with conviction. The document is distributed, the theme appears on screens and the organisation begins to speak a new language.

Then Monday arrives. Budgets follow the old priorities. Meetings request the old reports. Employees still need three approvals for the decision the strategy supposedly decentralised. Frontline teams protect themselves from the same penalties, and the people using the service experience no change.

The strategy may have been announced. It has not yet been implemented.

Leadership becomes operational when purpose changes repeated action: who decides, what receives time and money, which routine is redesigned, what information travels upward, how a mistake is corrected and what outcome reaches the person the institution exists to serve.

The Africa Water and Sanitation Systems Leadership Symposium concludes in Kigali on 21 August. Convened by the African Union, the African Ministers' Council on Water and the Government of Rwanda, and facilitated by IRC, its programme brings political, fiscal, financial and technical leadership into one systems agenda aligned with the Africa Water Vision 2063.

The official programme emphasises financial credibility, resilient systems, investable services and leadership across multiple levels. These facts verify the event, its conveners and intended framework. They do not establish that financing has been secured, systems have changed or water and sanitation services have improved.

Opening the symposium, Rwanda's prime…