Only one in five companies believe they have high-quality strategy. What do such Strategy Champions have in common? They excel at designing bold strategies—and are even better at mobilizing their execution. Crafting a strategy—the process of making coherent, hard-to-reverse choices under uncertainty with the aim of building long-term value—has always been demanding. In 2010, only 35 percent of more than 2,000 surveyed executives reported that their strategies passed four or more of McKinsey’s Ten Tests of Strategy. The increasing uncertainty and complexity of the business environment have made that task even harder. The World Uncertainty Index shows baseline uncertainty more than doubling since 1990, high-uncertainty events occurring more often, and each major spike being more severe than its predecessor (Exhibit 1).
