Your real strategy is showing

No matter how well you cover it up, your real beliefs escape and betray you.

How great is the distance between the strategy you signed off and the strategy of your head, heart and hands? Did South Africa’s ambassador to the United States ignore his own advice, setting aside his own strategy as he spoke to the Mapungubwe Institute for Strategic Reflection on March 14? Was the strategy of his heart different to the strategy he signed off with his president?

Many managers in the private sector are critical of South African bureaucrats – and there is much to criticise. For the most part, claims of a better future for all South Africans is a hollow promise, as there is too much evidence of money ending up far away from the betterment of South African lives. As an example, and at risk of oversimplification to make a point - on the national budget there is money for healthcare – but too much of it is spent on wealth-care and wasted-care.? Corruption is the worst problem, followed by ineffective resource allocation and control – the latter being traditional management areas of competence.

When words and plans say one thing, but resource allocation and action say another, then the strategy that was signed off is not aligned with the strategy of the managers head, heart and hands. Before wondering why, lets make sure that this is not sounding like a theoretical or “government-only” problem.

When a group of people get together to agree on a plan, or to work out a solution to a problem, there is often some sort of unspoken compromise. At its most obvious it is the passive-aggressive agreement that comes from not being heard but feeling coerced into moving on. Those agreements are rarely worth anything. It’s the smile and nod in a meeting, business as usual outside the meeting. How often does that happen? More often than anyone in private enterprise would like to admit.

Worse still, there are managers who tolerate strategic sense-making only as a source of information – not as a point of alignment. For those executives, confident in their power and admiring of their ability, decisions can and should be in-the-moment, free from any guard rails or guidelines given by pre-agreed values, or strategic priorities. These are the poker-playing executives, reading the deck and sensing the moment. This is a viable approach for what Dr. Henry Mintzberg calls a “personal enterprise”, where the organisation dances to the tune of its powerful founder. In other settings, this is not sustainable.

More common in these other settings is getting together to agree a few things. In these agreements, reflection and honesty are golden. Consciously (or worse, unconsciously) agreeing to things that are not backed up with belief (agreeing but not believing) really sets the organisation back.

We have seen cross-team strategies completely ignored by one team. We have seen CEO’s that excuse values or strategic exceptionalism with “that’s what I wanted to do”, and we have seen other broken agreements (small or large) that destroy trust and break relationships.

Our Ambassador to the USA, in his own words, knew that as he started his second term as South African Ambassador, he would need to be careful. In the same moment he went too far and revealed himself, rather than protecting his country. Nobody can fault the man for revealing himself, but the Ambassador is found at fault. The gap between what was agreed and what lay in his head, heart and hands was too great. How do we close those gaps in everyday working life?

Are organisations designed for honesty? “Context Engineering” is the theme of our March 2025 conversation café. We approach the subject through a simple question – “What if we had no budget for training?” If we couldn’t spend a cent on workshops or courses, how could we still help people grow, perform, and develop in our organisations?

This shifts the focus to organisational design—exploring how we shape environments that guide behaviour, improve decision-making, and build capability.

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Sometimes heads and hearts align, and other times they don’t. In what ways do you see company executives revealing the strategy of their hearts – for better or worse? Please share a story of a time when you stuck to agreements however hard it might be, or stories of failing to live the agreements and paying the price.

Written by: Craig Yeatman