To better appreciate the power of the steering wheel metaphor, consider an innovative medical device company (hypothetical) that has a couple of exciting products and a highly-skilled and energized team of employees. After a successful off-site retreat, the executives announce a goal of achieving 25% annual growth over the next 3 years to become a leading provider of products in their general product segment. The executive team rallys the troops and the CEO inspires them with their mission to help people live healthy productive lives. The CFO shows charts of their desired financial future and announces the generous stock options and bonuses that will allow all the employees to share in the prosperity. The VP of HR reminds them of their proud heritage and values. Everyone leaves feeling positive and motivated to excel at their jobs to contribute to their collective success.

However, successfully executing the strategy (even if there is a detailed strategy behind the executive’s goals) is not so easy. Even if there is a great outpouring of effort and energy to attain those goals, there is likely to be a lack of focus and consistency. There are likely to be multitudes of conflicting decisions and choices if people don’t clearly understand the strategy and how they are to contribute to accomplishing it.

Think of some of the many unanswered questions: Is the growth to be accomplished by acquisitions? New product development? Adding accessories or services or other revenue streams around their existing products? Expanding geographically? Globally? Building deeper customer relationships to reduce customer turnover? Should they pursue aggressive cost-cutting to win market share with lower prices or make new efforts to add value and enable premium prices? Should they pursue breakthrough innovations fueled by new R&D or seek to resell complimentary products and services through strategic alliances? Will there be branding changes? Will they be the fastest or the most predictable? Will they try to win new customers with their core products by developing new sales channels? What will be their core value proposition for their customers? Are they targeting any specific customer groups? What processes should they excel in? Should investments be made in new Customer Relationship Management systems, supply chain optimization, channel expansion, or product development? How should limited IT dollars be invested? If the HR staff wants to emphasize employee training, what kind of training should be emphasize? The list of questions could go on for pages. Even if the executive know the answers to all of those questions, the organization is unlikely to succeed in executing the strategy if that understanding is not appropriately spread throughout the organization.