For Boards and their ‘Accidental Sponsors’

Does Strategy matter?
• For small businesses ineffective strategy contributes to the problem of 50% surviving no
longer than 5 years and 64% surviving less than 10 years (Watson and Everett, 1996).
• Poor strategy in large businesses results in underperformance. In a five year study of underperforming
US organisations (Booz Allen Hamilton, 2004)
– 60% of the value destroyed was due to strategic errors
– 27% to operational errors
– 13% to compliance problems.
• In the public sector, strategy is a confused concept (Stewart, 2004) and we often talk about
policy instead.
– A study of the State of Victoria in Australia, normally considered an exemplar, found $100B had been
invested into projects over a 10 year period without any evidence any high level policy goals had
improved (Young et al., 2012).
– A follow up study in the State of NSW also in Australia suggested that more generally, only one in five
policy goals are positively impacted (Young and Grant, 2015).