Harvard Business School reckons 90% of organisations don't execute their strategy effectively. That number gets quoted a lot, usually to sell something, but it's worth sitting with for a moment. Nine in ten. Which means the problem almost certainly isn't the quality of the thinking - it's that the thinking never reaches the people who'd have to act on it.

Nested strategy is one answer to that. It won't suit everyone, and I'll be direct about who it won't suit.

What it is

Nested strategy is, at heart, a strategy within a strategy. Think of Russian dolls, each fitting inside the next.

At the top sits the corporate strategy - the mission, the vision, the long-term objectives. That cascades into business unit strategies, which set out how each division contributes to those corporate goals while accounting for its own market and competition. And those in turn inform functional strategies - the concrete actions inside marketing, finance, operations, HR.

Each layer connects to the one above it and to its siblings alongside it. Done well, someone three levels down can draw a straight line from what they're doing on Tuesday to what the company said it was trying to achieve.

Why it works when it works

Three reasons, mostly.

It creates coordination - a clear hierarchy of objectives means departments pull in the same direction rather than optimising against each other. It supports better decisions, because leaders can see the broader implications of a choice rather than just its local effect. And it gives you a genuine framework for resource allocation: when every initiative can be traced to a strategic priority, the ones that can't become visible, and you can stop funding them.

There's also a softer benefit that I think is the real one. People at every level can see themselves in it. That's rare, and it's worth a great deal.

Nine in ten organisations fail to execute their strategy. The problem is rarely the thinking. It's that the thinking never reaches the people who'd have to act on it.

When it's the wrong tool - and I'd be honest about this

Nested strategy is not a universal good, and I've seen it forced onto organisations it doesn't fit.

If you're a startup or scale-up, it will probably feel like an ill-fitting suit. The team isn't large enough for anyone to own a distinct layer, people wear several hats, and ownership of outcomes is genuinely shared. In that setting, a problem-focused approach usually delivers more - because learning is continuous and the strategy is being rewritten every few weeks anyway.

If your organisation doesn't empower people, it will fail. This one is decisive. Each layer has to feed the one above, which means the people in those layers need the authority to actually decide things. If strategy is owned exclusively at board level and everything below is execution, you don't have a nested strategy. You have a cascade of instructions with a nicer name.

And if you're large and prone to planning, be careful. Big organisations with many departments have a talent for turning strategy into an elaborate planning exercise. Nested strategy gives that instinct plenty of structure to hide behind. The dolls all fit together beautifully and nothing changes.

What it needs to work

Trust and openness at every level. A corporate strategy that's genuinely clear rather than merely long. Business unit leaders who collaborate rather than compete for budget. And functional leaders who can translate ambition into something a team can actually do on Monday.

That's a demanding list, and it's why the approach fails more often than it should. The framework isn't the hard part. The culture it presumes is.

The question

Ask someone two levels below your leadership team what the company's strategy is, and what their part in it is. Whatever they say - and however long they take to say it - that's your real answer.

If the answer troubles you, it's worth a conversation. Book a short discovery call with the team at Distinction - no pitch, just an honest read on whether your strategy is reaching anyone.