Don't worry about competitors copying your strategy. Worry about your stakeholders not knowing it

"You see, Charlie, not so very long ago there used to be thousands of people working in Mr. Willy Wonka’s factory. Then one day, all of a sudden, Mr. Wonka had to ask every single one of them to leave, to go home, never to come back." "But why?" asked Charlie. "Because of spies."

This is a fictional exchange from Roald Dahl’s beloved Children’s book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. But in the real world companies are no less worried about divulging secrets, particularly when it comes to strategy. Maybe best not to share it with anybody outside the executive team? After all, if staff knows your strategy, it could easily find its way onto social media.

An unfound worry. According to research conducted by Kevin Coyne and John Horn only 17% of company's react to a rival's move. If it does not affect them directly, they won't. And even if it might, there is still inertia.

You should worry less about your rival and more about how to get your own strategy done. Secrecy won't help with this.

The execution problem

Most strategies fail because the execution is botched. This starts with members of the organization being unable to identify the key strategic priorities. According to a survey of 8,000 managers from 250 companies, only half of the C-Suite have a clear sense how major priorities fit together. This drops to about a third for their direct reports and to 16% for frontline supervisors and team leaders. If your own people don’t understand your strategy, the prospect of rivals discovering your plans is probably not your biggest concern. They are likely to be as confused as members of your own organization.

The second big execution challenge is coordination. To pull off big new initiatives, different functions and divisions need to work together. According to the same survey, only 9% of managers state they can always rely on other functions and units. Deliberate efforts to work on strategic initiatives across departments are needed to tackle this issue. Concerns about secrecy hardly facilitate this.

The solution: transparency and inclusion

The obvious solution to these execution challenges is a more open approach in strategy making. Steelcase, the world’s largest office furniture manufacturer, for example set up an online jam in 2017 to galvanize its 13,000 employees around a new strategy. In contrast to the usual top-down communication plans, the 36-hour jam allowed employees to explore strategy simultaneously. This type of engagement creates personal ownership as staff can figure out what exactly is relevant for them. They also find ways to make connections and overcome the silo-thinking mentality. Transparency and inclusion, not secrecy lie at the heart of this approach.

Transparency also trumps secrecy as far as shareholders are concerned. In a study of 900 public strategy presentations Richard Whittington, Basak Yakis-Douglas, and Kwanwon Ahn found that the average stock price rose by 2 percent or the equivalent of $1.1 billion in market value on the day of the presentation. The positive effect was even stronger for new CEOs who announced their strategy within the first 100 days. Stock price was up by more than 5 percent, the equivalent of $2,8 billion in market value. And for new CEOs from outside the industry the upward bounce was 12 percent (i.e. $6.6 billion in market value). The message is clear: markets don’t like secrets. They want to understand your strategy. Of course, if investors don’t think your strategy makes sense, your stock price will still drop.

Secrecy simply matters less today

The notion that strategy needs to be secret is closely related to its roots in warfare. In the ancient Chinese manual The Art of War Sun Tzu advised generals to closely guard their plans: “By discovering the enemy’s dispositions and remaining invisible ourselves, we can keep our forces concentrated, while the enemy’s must be divided”. This is old strategy thinking. In today’s complex and interconnected world, a more collaborative approach will win the day.

An earlier version of this article was published in Forbes .