Why Strategic Plans Fail
The Scenario:
You have 120 seconds with a high-level official who is tired of "complex strategic plans" that never leave the paper.
The Hook: The Biological Reality
The reason most strategic plans fail isn't a lack of will; it’s biology. Our brains are hardwired to conserve energy. When we hand a team a 200-page mandate, the 'Biological Layer' of the brain sees a massive cognitive load and simply shuts down to protect itself. Uncertainty feels like a physical threat, so people stop moving and wait for a direct order.
The Problem: Policy Chaos
Right now, your objectives are likely written in 'Bureaucratese'—abstract goals like 'Modernizing the State'. To a civil servant’s brain, that is invisible. It’s an output—stuff we might do—but it doesn't describe a result. Without a clear action map, the organisation defaults to 'Command and Control,' which slows everything down to the speed of someone's personal approval.
The Solution: The WDW Hack
"We use a methodology called STRATA 2.0 to bridge this gap. We 'Biologicalize' your strategy using a simple linguistic template: Who does what by how much?
(Credits: Jeff Gothelf and Josh Seiden.)
Instead of 'Improving Judicial Efficiency,' we tell the team: 'The Clerk [Who] prepares Case Summaries [Does What] for 100% of new filings within 48 hours [By How Much]'.
Suddenly, the brain can visualize the movement. Cognitive load drops. Safety increases. This is how we achieved that 1:31 ROI at the TCU—by making the target so simple a human brain could actually hit it."
The Close: Aligned Autonomy
When we define success as a change in human behavior, we no longer have to micromanage the tasks. You give them the Outcome, and they find the Output. That is Aligned Autonomy: your teams are empowered to act because they finally know exactly what 'winning' looks like today.
