What Are The Barriers To implementing a Strategy? And How To Overcome Them
The barriers to implementing a strategy can be systematically categorised into several core areas: People, Processes, Structures, & Resources, Clarity & Communication. It is widely cited across multiple studies that 50-90% of all strategies fail (Waterman et al, 1988). The State of Strategy Report 2025 reveals that strategies fail to deliver their intended results because of execution gaps. A 2025 UK enterprise study, for instance, found that only 18.4% of businesses achieve 80% of their growth targets. Strategy implementation is just half the battle; the real challenge lies in execution and overcoming the barriers to implementation. The difficulty of implementing a strategy and executing it successfully into tangible results is the most persistent challenge in business. Executives often cite the challenge of implementing and executing a strategy as one of their biggest pain points, often because of the barriers that exist when implementing the strategy.
The Four Core Barriers of Strategy Implementation
A barrier to implementing a strategy can be defined as any internal or external obstacle that hinders an organisation's ability to successfully translate its formulated strategy into actions, resource allocation, and ultimately, the desired results. A barrier is the reason why a good plan fails to become a reality
People & Culture Barriers (The Human Element): The biggest obstacle is resistance to change, often driven by afear of the unknown factor. Change introduces uncertainty, and uncertainty triggers anxiety. The resistance to change is a natural psychological result when people face unclear outcomes; they tend to say, "Will I lose my job?" "Will I still be good at what I do?" Employees resist change when they doubt leaders' intentions or competence. In his foundational work on change management, John P. Kotter argued that employees resist organisational change when they do not trust the leadership or the motive behind the change. Kotter cites trust as essential for building a guiding coalition and for reducing resistance to change during business transformation. In organisational transitions, trust acts as the social lubricant that reduces friction. Without it, employees default to defensive mechanisms to protect their psychological and professional safety.
An organisation's people, including their shared values, beliefs and interactions, are the primary drivers of its culture. While leadership sets the tone, the daily actions, attitudes and decisions of employees at all levels create the actual culture of the organisation. Barriers in Ford Motor Company's "The Way Forward strategy acted as an obstacle preventing implementation, limiting how a policy could be executed, which caused the strategy to falter, become less effective or fail, rendering the strategy irrelevant to the changing external environment. The Way Forward Strategy struggled to be implemented at Ford because of the organisation's Culture of Silence, a feature of which was the "Silent No". Functional departments operated as fiefdoms, agreeing to global plans but secretly prioritising local budgets. At GM Motors before bankrupcy this was known as the GM Nod; everyone in the room agreed, but no one intended to execute.
Design Thinking Application: Reframing the Problem
To address the lack of trust, we must move from a Top-Down Mandate ( which triggers the fight or flight response from employees) to a Co-creation Model, a collaborative approach involving all functional departments and external stakeholders, including customers. Instead of viewing resistance to change as a barrier, it is used and treated as user feedback, improving the process. At Ford Motor Company, the resistance wasn't to the strategy itself but to the vulnerability the strategy demanded. Resistance is often a "survival reflex" in a low-trust environment.
Before Alan Mulally took over as company CEO in 2006, Ford was facing deep financial trouble and had a major problem with strategy implementation and execution stemming from a toxic corporate culture. Ford had a series of strategies, but most notably the "Way Forward Strategy", which included strategic moves such as:
- Selling of core brands like Jaguar, LandRover and Volvo.
- Cutting Costs and Capacity
- Focusing on a smaller number of vehicle platforms.
When Alan Mulally took over the Way Forward Strategy, he used a psychological nudge. He famously cheered when a manager reported a Red status on a project. By rewarding honesty instead of punishing failure, he began the Iterative Rebuilding of Trust
Manchester United: "The Heritage Trap" and Psychological Safety
At Manchester United, the primary barrier to implementing strategy is a misalignment of identity. After three decades of dominance under a single leader, the club entered a decade-long crisis where the strategy changed with every manager, but the underlying culture remained stuck in a cycle of Loss Aversion and Entitlement. The Cultural barrier to implementing the strategy at work was cognitive dissonance, The Shadow Of The Past. The club's strategy often targets returning to the top, yet the culture developed a high tolerance for mediocrity. This factor creates cognitive dissonance, which is the mental stress or discomfort from holding conflicting beliefs and values at the club. At Manchester United, the cognitive dissonance which is created is one where the players and staff are told they are part of the world elite (The United Way), but their daily habits do not reflect this.
A Culture of Silence and leaks: For years, the dressing room was characterised by player power, a psychological state where individual players felt more powerful than the collective strategy. This led to a lack of psychological safety instead of healthy internal critique, and dissent was leaked to the media to protect individual reputations. Until the recent investment from INEOS, the strategy was bifurcated. The commercial side (revenue growth) was highly successful, but the sporting side lacked a performance architecture. As a result, the culture valued marketability over versatility, leading to expensive signings that did'nt fit a tactical plan. In the football business strategy, without performance architecture is just public relations (PR). If the culture rewards individual fame or (commercial metrics) more than collective output, no tactical shift will stick.
RC365 Holding PLC: The Founder Shadow and Scaling Pains.
When we analyse the cultural barriers to implementing a strategy at another business in our investment portfolio, RC365, we can identify a classic fintech struggle: The transition from a small, agile, founder-led team in Hong Kong to a publicly listed entity in London.
The Cultural Barrier (High Executive Turnover)
RC365 has seen multiple changes in key roles, like the CFO, within a short period, creating a Fragile Trust environment. When the C-Suit is a revolving door, middle management stops investing in long term stratey and shifts to survival mode. At RC365, the CEO has a dominant shareholding this may cause the culture to suffer from Authority Bias. If the strategy is driven by a single visionary, the organisation lacks Adhocracy, the flexible, creative culture needed to adapt when market conditions or share prices shift. RC365 has expanded into everything from payments and ERP systems to media productions. Culturally, this dilutes the social identity of the firm; employees no longer know what the core mission is, leading to a loss of focus and high Context Switching Costs. Public listing requires a Governance Culture, not just a growth culture.
This relates to Macneil and Esser's work (2023), discuss how listing rules and governance expectations evolve together. When a company scales faster than it;s cultural maturity, the result is a breakdown in internal accountability and strategic focus.
Process and Accountability Barriers
One of the reasons the Way Forward Strategy failed at Ford was because of it;s famous silo political culture. The culture saw different business units operating as warring fiefdoms. When executives presented their reports, they would consistently show their own departments as being profitable and achieving KPI targets even though the company was in fact losing millions. Ford's financial problems were probably caused by a lack of accountability within these global business units because the company prized political appeasement over honesty. Executives would not admit their problems, and no one was held accountable for cross-department failures. The period of the late 1990s