Companies rarely suffer today from a lack of strategy, ideas, or data. Far more often the problem appears in the space between 'we know what we want to do' and 'our organization actually works that way'. For eight years of strategic work I have observed this gap up close. And siClaro was born from it.
For almost a decade I worked with companies primarily as a strategist. We analyzed the market, customers and competition, made decisions about the direction of development, brand, sales and communication. Strategies, plans, priorities and specific recommendations were created. And increasingly I noticed that the biggest challenge did not appear during the strategy work itself - it appeared later.
When the workshops ended, Miro was closed, the presentation landed on the drive, and the organization returned to its everyday life. On Monday morning, you still had to answer the client, make the sale, resolve a conflict in the team, make a dozen small decisions, deliver the project and react to something that could not be predicted in the strategy. And that was when the real life of the strategy began.
There is a gap between 'we know' and 'we do'
I recently returned to this observation while reviewing reports on organizational effectiveness. Highspot data reveals a very interesting discrepancy: 96% of surveyed organizations declare they have a clear growth strategy, 98% declare execution standardization, but only 53% achieve highly repeatable results. Regardless of the specific methodology of a given study, this discrepancy well illustrates something I have observed in my work with companies for years. We may know where we want to go, and even know how we want to get there, and yet the organization may not necessarily be able to do it consistently.
Because between strategy and result there is still the entire organizational system. There are people, their competencies and decision-making style, processes, responsibilities, information flow, technology, sales, marketing, finance and daily priorities. There is also the CEO, who very often remains the place through which too many decisions pass. If these elements do not support the chosen direction, even a very good strategy begins to fall apart along the way.
The strategy can be good. The organization may not yet be ready to carry it.
This distinction is particularly important to me. When a strategy does not deliver the expected results, the natural reaction is often to create another one: a new marketing plan, new positioning, a new product, a team restructuring, another tool, another project. Meanwhile, the problem may lie somewhere completely different.
The company has a direction, but the team understands priorities differently. Sales promises something that operations cannot smoothly deliver. The CEO delegates tasks, but does not delegate responsibility and decisions. Marketing generates interest, but the sales path does not use it. Processes were created that no one actually uses in practice. Or the organization is running so many initiatives at once that none of them gets enough time, attention and resources.
From the outside it may look like a dozen different problems. In reality, these are often symptoms of a few tensions located deeper in the organization. And that is why, before creating another strategy, it is worth first asking a different question: do we really need a new strategy, or do we finally need to create the conditions in which the current one can start working?
This is exactly the observation that siClaro was born from
Over the years I became less and less interested in handing the client a presentation and saying: 'here is the strategy, good luck'. I wanted to stay at the table a little longer, see what happens when decisions meet reality: where the organization begins to resist, what needs to be simplified, what competencies are missing, what can be automated, where the CEO is still a bottleneck, and where the team simply needs more clarity. And that is the space siClaro began to occupy.
We work between strategy and execution
Sometimes we start by creating a strategy. Other times the strategy already exists and the first task is to find the answer to why it is not translating into expected results. We map the organization, look for places where time, money, energy or team potential are being lost, identify the right problem and choose the right solution.
Sometimes it will be a strategic change, other times it will be organizing sales, communication or responsibilities in the team, and still other times it will be implementing a process, dashboard or AI tool that will take unnecessary work off people. Not because the organization needs everything at once - quite the opposite. It is about finding the place whose change will allow the whole system to work better.
Strategy begins where the presentation ends
Today I am much less interested in whether the strategy looks good on a slide. I am interested in what will happen to it on Monday morning: whether the person responsible for sales knows what it means for them, whether marketing knows who they are talking to and why, whether leaders can make decisions without asking the CEO every time, whether projects, budgets and team time really reflect declared priorities. And finally: whether after three months the organization behaves differently than before the strategy was created?
Because strategy is not a document - it is a change in the way an organization makes decisions. And its true value is only visible when those decisions begin to consistently turn into action, and action into results. And that is exactly the space we want to close at siClaro.
Not sure yet where strategy falls apart in your organization?
I created a tool to help CEOs look at their company as a whole and identify areas where time, money, energy or team potential are being lost today. Before you add another initiative, check where it is really worth starting.
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