By Tim Mead
Managing Director,Gustin Partners

Why is formulating a strategy so difficult for companies?

The question comes to mind almost every week day as the likes of FT.com, Business Insider, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomerg.com and The New York Times Business/Dealbook sections extol leaders whose strategies are paying off and damn those without such currency.

And it’s not as if there aren’t any blueprints for strategy development to follow. The wonders of the Internet—not to mention the marketing ambitions of Tier 1 consulting firms—bring one nearly countless treatises on strategy from McKinsey, BCG, Bain, Strategy&—either directly or through faithful conduits like the HBR, Sloan Review or Knowledge@wharton. Courage, or lack thereof, may hold the answer.

A confident if not brave individual has to lead the charge toward strategy. Ginni Rometty at IBM,  Meg Whitman at HP, Jim Gorman at Morgan Stanley, John Chen at Blackberry and another individual come immediately to mind. All inherited faulty business models that they had little or nothing to do in building. All have taken or are taking swift action to refashion them—based on new strategies appropriate for today’s and tomorrow’s challenges, not yesterday’s problems.

The other individual reshaping his business in light of monumental changes—the regulatory environment, competition from Silicon Valley, etc. —is JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon. In his annual letter to shareholders, remarkable for both its expansiveness and clarity, Dimon writes:

“So our ultimate goal is to think like a long term investor—build great franchises, strengthen moats and have good through-the-cycle financial results. Achieve the benefits of scale and eliminate the negatives. Develop great long-term achievable strategies. And manage the business relentlessly, like a great operator. Finally, continue to develop excellent management that keeps it all going. As Thomas Edison said, ‘Vision without execution is hallucination.’”

Courage can come from anywhere. It doesn’t necessarily need to be the CEO of an organization. It could come from outside—e.g., a clever activist investor that’s taken the time and spent the resources on developing a more coherent path forward for a company. It could come from a member of its board of directors. It even could come from a group of executive managers ambitious to realize the future.

“Quo vadis” is the essential question to answer at the start of the strategy journey. Without knowing where you are going and how to measure your progress along the way, strategy development is meaningless.

So is courage without capability. If an organization doesn’t have the people, processes and systems to execute on a vision, it is unreasonable to expect the organization—even in spite of a “brilliant” strategy.

Yet how many corporate strategies are constructed without sufficient input—really design authority--from the very leaders in charge of people (CHRO), processes (COO)  and systems (CIO/CTO/CMO)?

That, perhaps, gets at the answer: Strategy development is a team sport, not an individual game initiated by a CEO and refereed by a CFO’s planning group.

Pretty simple.

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Tim Mead is a managing director of Gustin Partners. He is responsible for major client relationships and engagements across the spectrum of the firm's services, with a concentration on client companies in the professional services, media, communications services and advanced information technologies sectors.