THE STRATEGY DESIGN DIAGNOSTIC
A Self-Assessment for
CEOs and Executive Directors
See what’s working. Find what’s missing.
Know where to focus next.
New Science. Ancient Wisdom. Better Business.
Why This Matters
Most strategic plans fail. You know this. The 90% failure rate reported by Kaplan and Norton at Harvard Business School has been a stubborn fixture for decades, and the reasons given haven’t changed much either—poor communication, weak metrics, failure to connect strategy to operations.
But here’s what I’ve learned in thirty-plus years of working inside organizations of every size, type, and complexity: the execution problems everyone points to are usually symptoms. The root cause sits upstream, in how strategy is designed in the first place.
The Essential Strategy Formula is built on a simple premise. Every organization—regardless of what it does, where it operates, or who it serves—needs three things to succeed long-term:
Purpose that is internally compelling and externally valuable. Growth that is intentional and matched by the internal capacity to sustain it. And Evolution that actively anticipates change rather than reacting to it. These three elements, held in dynamic Equilibrium, form the PGEE foundation.
This self-assessment is designed to help you see your organization through that lens. Not to tell you what to do—you and your team are the experts on your organization. But to surface the patterns, gaps, and imbalances that traditional planning processes tend to miss.
The score is not the end goal. It’s perspective. What you can see, you can address. What you can’t, runs the show without your permission.
How to Use This Assessment
For each section, you’ll find a set of diagnostic statements. Rate each one on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 means you strongly disagree and 5 means you strongly agree. Don’t overthink it—your first instinct is usually the most honest one.
After the diagnostic statements, you’ll find reflection questions. These are where the real work happens. The rating scale tells you where you are. The reflection questions start to tell you why.
At the end, you’ll tally your scores across all four dimensions and look for the patterns—which pillars are strong, which are underdeveloped, and where the imbalance is pulling your strategy off course.