Commerce Beyond Borders

Most companies are pretty good at writing strategies. Far fewer are good at executing them. That gap — and what to do about it — is exactly what Kevin Ertell has spent his career studying, and now he's written the book on it.

Kevin brings a rare perspective to this conversation. He started as a clerk at Tower Records and worked his way up to Senior Vice President over 20 years. From there he held senior roles at Borders, Sur La Table, and Nike, where he led digital and retail operations globally. He has seen strategy succeed and fail at every level of an organisation.

His new book, The Strategy Trap: Why Companies Fail at Execution and How to Get It Right, lays out a six-part framework he calls the Six Cs, built around two phases: setting the stage (co-creation, clarity, capacity) and showtime (communication, coordination, coaching).

In this episode Kevin, Chris and Renee dig into why execution breaks down, what leaders consistently get wrong, and why the first step of execution is actually writing the strategy itself. They also get into the role of outside consultants, how OKRs done right can transform alignment, and why stack ranking priorities beats high-medium-low every time.

Plus the NASA janitor story. You'll want to hear that one.

Key takeaways:

• Strategy writing is the first step of execution, not a precursor to it
• Co-creation drives commitment — the IKEA effect is real
• Capacity has to be created before a strategy is launched, not found along the way
• Communication should be early, loud, and continuous
• The bigger the organisation, the more structured the approach needs to be — but smaller organisations need it too

The Strategy Trap is available now on Amazon.