Leadership Strategy Traps: The Top 2 to Avoid

Are You Falling Into Common Leadership Strategy Traps?
Nearly every successful business understands the pitfalls that can derail even the best-laid leadership strategies. Leaders invest significant time, resources, and energy crafting a clear strategic direction that will guide their organization toward its goals. Seasoned leaders recognize that a thoughtfully designed strategy not only sharpens focus on what drives performance today but also positions the business for long-term success.

Strategic Clarity Research
Our Organizational Alignment Research that a strategy that is clear, credible, and actionable accounts for 31% of the performance gap between high- and low-performing organizations. To be effective, a strategy doesn’t need perfection — it needs to be:

• Clear enough to guide decisions
• Believable enough to gain commitment,
• Implementable enough to drive measurable results.

The Strategy Challenge
In over 25 years of helping companies grow, we’ve consistently seen that most business strategies are not designed for successful execution. Too often, even well-intentioned strategies falter because they lack the structure, clarity, and practical alignment needed to translate vision into results.

The Two Most Common Leadership Strategy Traps to Avoid

Before a strategic plan is fully rolled out, certain common pitfalls can already be undermining its success. Here are two of the most frequent traps that trip up leaders early in the process:

1. The Business Strategy Is Too Broad and Too Vague
   The most common leadership strategy trap is creating a plan that is overly broad and vague. Strategies should never be wishful thinking.  Leaders and companies cannot do everything well or be all things to all people.

   Instead, a strategy must focus on what truly matters. Not all initiatives carry equal value, and leaders must direct their finite resources and energy toward areas where they will make the greatest impact.

   A Historical Example: Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)
   UCLA management professor Richard Rumelt highlights DEC as a cautionary tale. During a contentious executive meeting, one faction wanted to prioritize computers, another focused on solving customer problems, and a third aimed to build better chips. The compromise was a vague statement: “DEC is committed to providing high-quality products and services and being a leader in data processing.”

   This consensus-based approach offered no clear focus or actionable guidance. Instead of selecting an objective that could drive meaningful results, DEC chose ambiguity—and the consequences were severe. Within five years, DEC had lost so much ground that it was acquired by Compaq in 1998.

   A Modern Example: High-Growth Tech Services Firm
   A recent LSA client began the year with five strategic pillars and 32 key initiatives. Unsurprisingly, progress stalled. The company regained momentum only after narrowing its focus to three initiatives. While all 32 areas seemed important, only a few truly mattered for growth over the next twelve months. Leaders had to make significant trade-offs to advance the strategy effectively.

   The Lesson
   Effective strategy requires taking a stand — deciding where to place big strategic bets and how to win. Strong leaders make the tough choices that channel resources, energy, and focus toward what will truly move the business forward.

2. The Business Strategy Is Not Actionable
   The second most common leadership strategy trap is crafting a strategy that cannot be acted upon. A plan is only valuable if it includes clear steps that move the organization toward its desired outcomes. Every employee must understand the core strategic purpose, the plan itself, and precisely what they need to do over the next 90 days to contribute to its success.

   Strategy execution is everything. When employees see how their work directly drives strategic goals, alignment and momentum follow naturally.

   An Example of an Actionable Strategy: NVIDIA
   Founded in 1993, NVIDIA initially struggled to compete in the crowded 3-D graphics chip market for gaming. To gain an edge, the company adopted a highly focused strategy: “Release a faster, better chip three times faster than the industry norm.”

   To make this actionable, NVIDIA concentrated on just two levers:

   (1) Organizing three developer teams on overlapping schedules to accelerate innovation.
   (2) Investing heavily in simulation facilities to test products extensively on site, eliminating typical delays.

   This clear, executable strategy produced remarkable results. NVIDIA not only thrived in a competitive market but also pursued strategic acquisitions and, by 2007, earned Forbes’ Company of the Year recognition.  Now NVIDIA is the world leader in artificial intelligence computing.

   The Lesson
   A strategy is only as powerful as the actions it drives. Focused, actionable strategies give employees clarity, create aligned execution, and deliver measurable business results.

The Bottom Line
Strategic ambiguity is the root of many leadership strategy traps. When people aren’t aligned on where the organization is headed or how to get there, even the best plans encounter unnecessary obstacles. If your strategy is failing to gain consistent traction across the organization, it’s time to pause, clarify the vision, and secure true commitment — because without strategic clarity, execution and results will always fall short.

To learn more about leadership strategy traps to avoid, download  7 Ways to Stress Test Your Strategy

by Tristam Brown: CEO

Tristam Brown is an executive business consultant and organizational development expert with more than three decades of experience helping organizations accelerate performance, build high-impact teams, and turn strategy into execution. As CEO of LSA Global, he works with leaders to get and stay aligned™ through research-backed strategy, culture, and talent solutions that produce measurable, business-critical results. See full bio.