Why Strategy Teams Are Losing Influence, and What the Data Is Really Telling Us

Across boardrooms and executive committees, expectations of strategy functions have rarely been higher. Strategy teams are increasingly asked to anticipate disruption, guide investment under constraint, integrate AI and technology decisions, and ensure that long-term direction translates into measurable outcomes. Yet recent research suggests a growing tension between these expectations and the actual influence strategy teams hold once planning cycles conclude.

Multiple surveys conducted over the past two years point to a consistent pattern. While strategy functions remain central to setting direction, their role in shaping material decisions during execution is more limited than many leaders assume. Research from Harvard Business Review Analytic Services, drawing on responses from several hundred senior executives, indicates that fewer than a third of strategy teams believe they have the mandate to shape significant business decisions beyond formal planning processes. Execution ownership, by contrast, is increasingly dispersed across operational, functional, and product leaders.

This finding aligns closely with broader organisational trends. Data from McKinsey and Deloitte shows that many organisations have deliberately flattened structures, reduced management layers, and decentralised decision-making authority in pursuit of speed and responsiveness. In theory, this shift should allow strategy to move faster through the organisation. In practice, it has often had the opposite effect, weakening the mechanisms through which strategic intent is translated into coordinated action.

The result is a paradox. Strategy teams are more involved in execution discussions than ever before, yet are frequently positioned as advisors rather than decision owners. They provide analysis, frame choices, and highlight risks, but lack the authority to resolve trade-offs when priorities collide. Over time, this dynamic creates a subtle erosion of influence, not because strategy teams lack insight or capability, but because the operating model no longer clearly specifies who has the right to decide when execution choices materially affect strategic outcomes.

This erosion has measurable consequences. Bain & Company’s research on strategy execution consistently shows that organisations with clear alignment between strategy ownership and execution accountability outperform peers on margin growth and capital efficiency. Where accountability is diffused, decisions slow down, resource allocation becomes incremental rather than deliberate, and performance drifts away from strategic intent. These outcomes are not the result of poor strategy, but of weak execution governance.

What is often missing from the discussion is how intentionally this situation has arisen. Many leadership teams have accepted a degree of ambiguity as the price of decentralisation, assuming that alignment will emerge through collaboration and influence rather than formal authority. However, recent evidence suggests that this assumption does not hold at scale. As organisations grow more complex and execution becomes more distributed, informal coordination struggles to keep pace, particularly when capital is constrained and trade-offs become sharper.

Technology and AI investment has further exposed this gap. As boards demand clearer evidence of value realisation, strategy teams are being asked to explain not only what the organisation intends to do, but how competing initiatives fit together, which dependencies matter most, and where resources should be reallocated when assumptions change. Without defined decision rights, these questions become difficult to answer convincingly, and strategy risks being perceived as disconnected from delivery even when it is deeply involved.

The emerging picture, then, is not one of strategy teams losing relevance, but of organisations failing to update governance models to match how strategy is now expected to operate. Influence without authority may work in stable environments or smaller organisations, but it becomes fragile in complex, fast-moving systems where decisions must be made continuously and under pressure.

The most effective organisations appear to be those that recognise this tension and address it directly. Rather than relying on influence alone, they are clarifying which strategic decisions must remain central, which can be delegated, and how execution choices are escalated when they have material strategic impact. In doing so, they preserve the benefits of decentralisation while maintaining coherence at the enterprise level.

The signal to watch is not whether strategy teams are invited into more conversations, but whether they are given explicit roles in resolving the trade-offs that shape outcomes. Where that authority is defined, strategy retains its influence. Where it is not, influence gradually dissipates, regardless of the quality of analysis or intent.

In this sense, the current challenge facing strategy functions is not primarily about skills, tools, or frameworks. It is about organisational design. As expectations of strategy continue to rise, the question for leadership teams is whether the structures that support execution are evolving at the same pace.