The note in brief
- A strategic standard is needed: without clear rules, strategy fragments. A common language brings order and consistency.
- Reward the right leadership: value those who plan and create results, not those who only generate noise.
- Balance present and future: integrate stability and innovation to ensure growth today and relevance tomorrow.
- Align teams: coordinate departmental actions to avoid confusion and maximize results.
- Recognize talent: measure and value those who really make a difference in strategy.
An invitation to become a key player in the transformation
If you want to go further, MAKE PROGRESS® offers you the opportunity to become a qualified coach. STRTGY has designed an intensive 16-week, hands-on and exciting professional qualification course. It is a unique opportunity to carve out time to really work at a strategic level, understand the mechanics of strategy, and become skilled at orchestrating change.
Business strategy is a Tower of Babel
Companies are full of people with incredible talent, grow because of that talent, and succeed in extraordinary projects. They invent new products, initiate digital transformations, work on expanding into new markets. But as the company grows and ambitions increase, one problem becomes apparent: no one speaks the same language.
Marketing talks about leads, CACs, traffic. Sales focuses on contracts to sign, meetings, and POC. Production looks at cost per hour and margins, while logistics thinks only about efficiency. As in the Tower of Babel, those who have to lead the work, those who have to lead the business, find themselves in strategic hell.
No matter how smart leaders are or how committed teams are, we often come up against a simple but devastating fact: there is no common language for communicating strategy in business.
Each team adopts its own strategic pillars: marketing invents its five points to improve the customer experience, sales creates its seven steps for an excellent business process, and so on. Everyone focuses on their own piece of the puzzle, but no one can see the whole picture.
And what happens? Silos. Fragmentation. Decisions made without considering the overall impact. In the end, the grand project that seemed so promising slowly stalled. Not because of lack of ambition or effort, but because of a communication disaster.
Think about it: how many times have you seen strategy meetings turn into endless debates in which everyone tries to defend his or her point of view? It is not a lack of ideas, but a lack of a common language. Business strategy should not be a battle of opinions, but an exercise in coordination. Leaders are called upon to create this coherence, to build a structure that puts everyone on the same page.
The problem: the chaos of strategic fragmentation
Business strategy often relies on outdated tools to guide conversations and support decisions. The problem is that leaders are not ready to lead these conversations especially if they continue to use inadequate tools. When I meet with companies, I realize that the only strategy tools really used are financial tools. Strategy manifests itself in budgets, budgets, and spreadsheets filled with economic numbers that are difficult to connect to day-to-day activities and, most importantly, far from the pattern of thinking needed to make decisions.
Even when teams decide to work on more elaborate strategies, extended presentations full of forcible language are created, and the best concepts remain buried under slides, lacking connection to executive reality. There is no numerical evidence of their implementation, nor are they integrated into patterns that define rhythm and structure for proper execution.
Strategic fragmentation is not only inefficient, it is dangerous. Teams do not communicate with each other, decisions are made without considering the overall impact, and the connection to the vision and mission of those leading the company is lost. Even the most ambitious projects begin to collapse under the weight of misaligned expectations, generating a vicious cycle of inefficiency, internal conflicts and missed opportunities.
When I started working on MAKE PROGRESS®, I interviewed over 400 business leaders about their strategic problems. What emerged was rampant internal fragmentation, accompanied by repetitive patterns that no one seemed to have solved. From this research came the idea of a structure that would allow each department to maintain its own identity, but working within a shared language and method.
MAKE PROGRESS® does not eliminate diversity, it coordinates it. It turns fragmentation into coherence, uniting the disconnected pieces of the old way of doing business strategy into an integrated, strong, results-oriented vision. Early field-tested versions of the methodology have shown practical evidence that its principles work well, resulting in a stable theory of strategy on which to build a standard.
The loneliness of the leader: the “lone linguist” of strategy
Being a business leader often means feeling like the only translator in a room full of people speaking different languages. A CEO or general manager is constantly in the role of mediator between teams and functions, trying to make sense of conflicting opinions, divergent metrics, and priorities that seem to have nothing in common. It is a position that not only isolates, but also makes it difficult to make effective decisions.
Not because of lack of skills or expertise, but for very practical reasons, such as educational background, and the difficulty of finding confidence in one’s front line on strategic concepts. Many leaders would like a sparring partner with whom they can question the status quo, constructively compare their opinions, and discuss their decisions in a structured way.
This loneliness manifests itself not only with internal teams, but also among peers. When business leaders meet, they often find themselves speaking different languages. Talking about strategy becomes an exercise in interpretation: everyone has their own mental schema, their own tools, and lacks a shared language to compare, inspire each other, and truly understand each other’s decisions. Without a common schema, it becomes impossible to create a deep dialogue, exchange useful ideas or understand strategic mechanisms in a concrete way.
At STRTGY we are building a community dedicated to precisely this level of strategic thinking. A place where leaders can meet and finally speak the same language. Those who participate in the professional qualification programs to become a qualified coach MAKE PROGRESS® gain access to private sessions called Office Hour, held throughout the year. During these sessions, leaders share real experiences of strategic transformation, offer and receive support, discuss within a common framework, and inspire each other.
Why the Tower of Babel is not a failure of ambition, but of communication
The truth is that great projects fail not because they are not good, but because the people involved do not speak the same language. In every company, departments operate with their own metrics and goals, which are logical and reasonable when taken individually, but rarely linked together in a coherent way. The result? Strategic chaos.
Take the example of a retail company launching an omnichannel strategy. Marketing focuses on increasing online traffic and improving the customer experience. Sales focuses on building loyalty and increasing revenue per customer. Logistics, on the other hand, works to reduce delivery costs and improve operational efficiency. Each team is committed to doing their job as well as possible, but no one knows how this all connects to a unified strategy. Decisions are made independently, without a common vision.
It is not a problem of ability or commitment: it is a problem of communication. Fragmentation of priorities inevitably leads to conflicts, delays and, in the worst cases, project failure. And just as in the Tower of Babel, not only does the project collapse, but talents also dissipate. When a common language is missing, the most competent and ambitious people feel frustrated and misunderstood. Sometimes, this frustration leads the best people to change companies, leaving an even bigger void to fill.
MAKE PROGRESS® takes action to avoid this scenario by creating a shared framework that allows each department to operate in sync while maintaining its own identity and expertise. It is not about unifying ideas, but creating a universal language that allows everyone to understand their role and how their work contributes to the overall vision.
With a shared method, talents not only stay, but can grow. Every strategic decision becomes understandable and measurable, every department knows how to contribute, and leaders can finally see the full picture. This is how the corporate Tower of Babel stops being a symbol of misunderstanding and becomes an extraordinary project built on the basis of clear communication, consistent strategy, and a cohesive team.
Toward a universal language of business strategy
By introducing a shared method such as MAKE PROGRESS®, you are doing what the builders of Babel should have done: give everyone a common vocabulary. You don’t eliminate differences, you coordinate them. Each department, each team, each function retains its uniqueness, but does so within a structure in which everyone can communicate and cooperate, instead of superficially collaborating. It is a paradigm shift: from fragmentation to cohesion, from chaos to order.
To build this consistency, MAKE PROGRESS® works in three stages.
1. The top-down phase: a leadership team is formed with the goal of accurately describing the emerging strategy. This means disambiguating long-term goals and clearly defining key metrics. In this phase, a mechanics of growth is identified that can be expressed in a simple, shared outline. This outline helps identify the strategic gears, key elements that function as alignment mechanisms for the entire organization.
2. Priority identification: once the mechanics of growth are defined, work is done to design the behavioral changes that teams need to adopt to best execute the strategy. Conversations are disambiguated through a small number of key metrics, which build numerical evidence for the strategy. This step is crucial to ensure that each team understands not only the overall strategy, but also their part in orchestrating its execution.
3. Bottom-up connection: only after the strategy has been communicated in a simple and consistent way can teams propose their own input. At this point, clear and consistent negotiations are initiated to connect the teams’ micro-strategies to the overall execution. There is never a single, monolithic strategy: MAKE PROGRESS® helps organizations orchestrate a collection of micro-strategies in a consistent and synchronized manner.
Through this approach, each business division finds a common language. Not only do they understand their own goals, but they understand how these connect to other departments, which helps them make faster decisions, reduce internal conflicts and, most importantly, create strategies that finally bring tangible results.
The power of a universal language lies not only in its simplification, but in its ability to bring out connections that would otherwise be lost. When everyone knows how to contribute and understands the value of their role within a larger strategic plan, a culture of genuine cooperation is created.
Assessing strategic competencies: why it is impossible without a shared language
Having a shared standard for strategy not only serves to make an organization run better-it also helps identify and celebrate people who are truly competent on strategy. It is a tool that avoids the risk, common in many companies, of rewarding the wrong leaders for the wrong reasons.
Martin Gutmann, in his enlightening TED Talk, invites us to reflect on this phenomenon by telling the stories of two famous polar explorers-Roald Amundsen and Ernest Shackleton. Amundsen is remembered as one of the greatest explorers in history: he planned every detail with extreme care, thoroughly studied the environment in which he operated, and made decisions based on knowledge and preparation. Thanks to this approach, he was able to reach the South Pole and return without incident, keeping to the planned schedule and minimizing risks to his team.
On the other side is Shackleton, a dramatic figure often celebrated for his tenacity in crisis situations. His most famous expedition, that of the ship Endurance, is a story full of adventure and danger, culminating in a dramatic rescue after the ship became trapped in the ice. However, what many people ignore is that much of that crisis was the result of planning errors and unwise choices by Shackleton himself.
Yet, as Gutmann explains, the world tends to celebrate Shackleton more than Amundsen. Why? Because we are attracted to stories of crisis and dramatic action. Something similar happens in companies. Leaders who react to emergencies, generate noise and always seem to be busy are often rewarded, while those who, with meticulous and strategic management, prevent crises and ensure sustainable results, remain in the shadows.
Having a standard for strategy, such as that offered by MAKE PROGRESS®, allows this distortion to be overcome. With a shared language and objective criteria, companies can distinguish between those who “fight against chaos” and those who, like Amundsen, prevent chaos from occurring. It is not about rewarding those who are most visible, but those who can make strategic decisions that bring value to the organization.
Adopting MAKE PROGRESS® is also an act of generosity. It shows that the leader is ready to return the strategy into the hands of the people who must execute it, transforming it from an elite exercise to a tool that involves the entire organization. It is a paradigm shift: the leader does not just dictate the vision, but creates the conditions for every team member to understand, contribute and grow. This generous spirit not only makes the strategy more effective but also strengthens the corporate culture, building trust, shared responsibility and cohesion.
With MAKE PROGRESS®, strategy stops being a matter of subjective opinions. It becomes a transparent and replicable system in which strategic competencies can be measured and the value of those who work intelligently and quietly can be recognized. This approach not only rewards merit, but also builds a more equitable and success-oriented corporate culture.
MAKE PROGRESS® as an antidote to the Tower of Babel
Strategy is not just speaking the same language, but building something bigger together. MAKE PROGRESS® is not a rigid, static manual, but a dynamic system that can guide you toward concrete transformation, making progress a tangible part of the way you work and think.
The strength of MAKE PROGRESS® lies in its unique ability to travel the growth journey along two key tracks for strategic execution:
- Business as usual, often overlooked, but essential to ensure stability and success in the present.
- Innovation, the ability to look to the future, adapt and remain relevant in an ever-changing market.
In a world where the biggest risk for any business is to become irrelevant, MAKE PROGRESS® offers you a framework allows you to preserve what works today, without losing sight of what will make your business and organization competitive tomorrow.
Change is not the enemy. People are not afraid of change; they desire it, they seek it. What they fear, perhaps, is the absence of progress. MAKE PROGRESS® not only reduces this fear, but turns it into positive energy, giving you the feeling that you are part of a meaningful and continuous path of growth.
Change is inevitable, but driving it is your choice. MAKE PROGRESS® gives you the tools to do it best, to build a system that generates that energizing sense of progress in you and everyone who is part of it.
ALWAYS MAKE PROGRESS ⤴
