Every organization operates with two strategies: the stated and the shadow strategy. Wocktail #11, The Shadow Sidecar: The Strategy Behind the Strategy, explores the disconnect between the formal plan and its shadow. Like a shadow, this hidden strategy moves alongside the organization’s actions and reveals its true priorities, decisions and outcomes.
The tension of two strategies comes into sharper focus when compared:
- The official strategy is documented in plans, discussed in forums and cascaded across the organization.
- The shadow strategy is unwritten an informal, but embedded in behaviours that shape decisions, define priorities, and drive resource allocation.
The distance between the stated strategy and the shadow strategy becomes evident in patterns as follows:
❌ The plan prioritizes focus, yet every adjacent opportunity is pursued
❌ The plan promotes specific metrics, yet performance is assessed using unrelated measures
❌ The plan encourages innovation, yet resources are spent on legacy initiatives
When actions diverge from declared priorities, confidence in the strategy erodes. As this fades, formal messages lose credibility, and informal practices become the true compass.
🔑 This is not a matter of intent; it is a matter of alignment. Closing the gap between formal strategy and operational reality requires institutional discipline:
✅ Establishing structured forums to identify and address points of misalignment
✅ Ensuring evaluation criteria reflect strategic priorities
✅ Demonstrating leadership consistency in words, actions, and resource decisions
💡 A strategy that is not operationalized is just a story. And in every organization, it is the lived reality, not the story, that sets the direction.