When strategy becomes inexecutable by design
A Vice President identified an under-targeted customer segment as a growth priority.
She asked three functions to grow it.
Sales.
Product.
Customer loyalty.
Each was accountable.
Each operated from its own domain.
Each knew performance would be compared.
They were competing.
No single owner was appointed to integrate strategy.
No authority was given to resolve trade-offs.
No forum existed where choices had to converge.
Product pushed the offering it believed best suited the segment.
Sales independently pushed a different product it believed would convert better.
Customer loyalty focused on recurring revenue through engagement.
Its messaging aligned with yet another offering.
There was no disagreement.
There was no discussion.
Each function acted within its mandate.
Same customer.
Three messages.
Three products.
Three value propositions.
No reinforcement.
Only interference.
All three strategies depended on the same research and analytics group.
Five people.
Already fully loaded.
Capacity stayed fixed.
Demand tripled.
Each function requested analysis to support its approach.
Each request was urgent.
Each assumed priority.
The research team complied. In parallel.
With no authority to collapse the work into one strategy.
Insights conflicted.
Trade-offs went unresolved.
Resolution required choosing one product, one message, one path.
No one was authorised to decide.
The customer experienced incoherence.
Attention split.
Messaging diluted.
Offers competed.
Conversion failed.
None of the strategies succeeded.
This was not miscommunication.
It was not poor execution.
It was design.
The design rewarded competition
where collaboration was required for success.
Comparison was incentivised.
Integration was not.
When collaboration is required but competition is rewarded,
strategy does not fragment at execution.
It is never executable.
This failure mode is one surface expression of a deeper structural loop.
The full model is developed in When Failure Becomes Rational.