What's more critical of two Strategizing or implementing ?

A few days back, I was with my friend in a South Delhi cafe. Themed with comic books, the walls of the cafe were filled with posters of Marvel and DC characters. There was also a dedicated library in the cafe that had a marvelous collection of Stan Lee's epic creations. It seemed pretty evident that the owner of the cafe was an ardent comics fan, and had tried to showcase his love for comics by means of a themed cafe. It was definitely a factor of differentiation in this world full of cafes serving pizzas and shakes.

However, as distinguished the idea be, the on-ground implementation seemed quite a dud. The owner was nowhere to be seen, and the staff had no clue why these comic books were there in the first place. Seemed like the directives to them was only to take pizza and shake orders and deliver them. And this, made this entire concept of differentiation go for a toss, as they too became one in a million cafes serving pizzas and shakes. 

Had the owner of the cafe been there or trained the employees to engage with the audience, the comic lovers amongst them would've surely found peace in the space where they came and grabbed some food. In today's world where consumer hijacking is becoming so customary, differentiation remains a key to create loyalty and retention.

This goes to show how much of a relevance it is to follow up your strategies with proper implementation practices, up to the grassroot levels. Sometimes, even large organizations after utilizing their topmost brains to create differentiation strategies, fail to create a framework of on-ground implementation of the same. This may include not hiring the right set of people, not defining proper KRA's, not being mindful of the adoption challenges, or not spending enough time and resources to address the same. Hence, as critical it is to be great strategists, it is equally important to be great implementers as well. That is surely what defines the success and longevity of an organisation!