When a strategy doesn't work, it can be either the strategy is wrong or the execution is wrong.

In practice in organizations, when something is wrong people tend to assume the execution is wrong, not the strategy.

If you think something is simple, then the only excuse for it not working is the competence of the entity executing it.

But if it's actually hard, you might erroneously blame the entity executing it.

Whether or not a strategy is actually viable often reduces, largely, to "is it possible to execute this without a miracle?"

In practice the reason most strategies don't work is that almost everything is more of a slog to execute than it seems like it will be.

The coordination headwind is a massive headwind.

A useful question to ask yourself when diagnosing a failed thing: "If the strategy turned out to be wrong, what would it look like?"

... And then if what you see looks anything like that, assume that maybe the strategy is wrong, not the execution.