Strategy is a Contact Sport

Recent global research by McKinsey & Company sheds new light on what distinguishes organizations that outperform their peers in volatile times. How Strategy Champions Win (2025) studied more than 400 companies and found that only one in five believes it has a high-quality strategy. Those that do—Strategy Champions—excel not only at designing bold strategies but, more importantly, at mobilizing their organizations to deliver them. 

For decades, strategy has been defined by its intellectual rigor: market assessments, diagnosing advantage, frameworks, defining moves. But the research reveals that the largest gap between leading and lagging organizations doesn’t lie in design or execution—it lies in mobilization, the discipline of translating intent into systemwide readiness. Strategy fails less often in conception than in connection. 

The research also highlights something long understood but seldom practiced: strategic courage. Strategy Champions make bold, irreversible choices in imperfect conditions and institutionalize learning so those choices can evolve. They treat strategy capability itself as an enterprise asset, investing in its methods, governance and talent. 

For strategists in service based industries – like healthcare, education or hospitality, as examples –  these lessons resonate deeply. Mobilization—the work of converting insight into system alignment—is where transformation succeeds or stalls. The strategist’s craft is no longer about the elegance of a plan but the social architecture that brings a strategy to life.