Every executive team I coach works hard to align on strategy. They debate priorities, refine ROCKS (quarterly priorities), and finally walk out of the room confident they’ve nailed it.

Yet a few months in, progress feels uneven. Teams are stuck in old habits. Projects stall. Strategy looks great on paper, but it isn’t fully alive in day-to-day work.

The reality is, it’s rarely the strategy itself. It’s the middle managers. They’re the hinge between strategy and execution. If they can’t translate big ROCKS into daily action, your strategy loses momentum. Most of the time, it’s not resistance. They just haven’t been equipped to carry it forward.

To keep the momentum going in the middle, let’s focus on a few practical moves we can make:

Create real ownership. Ask managers how the strategy applies to their team and let them shape the “how.” Ownership sparks commitment.
Turn big ROCKS into daily actions. “Grow market share by 20%” means nothing unless it’s connected to what people do this week, today, or right now.
Train managers to tell the story. When they can clearly explain why the work matters, how each team member connects, and what success looks like, strategy stops being so abstract.
Reward progress. If recognition focuses only on output, that’s what managers will chase. Celebrate decisions and behaviors that move the strategy forward.

Strategy isn’t a rollout. It’s about cascading focus through the organization. It dies not from poor planning, but from neglecting the middle.

Ask yourself: Do your managers know how to connect strategy to their team’s work? Do they have the tools and language to communicate it? Are they recognized for advancing the strategy or just hitting numbers?

If the answer is no, your strategy isn’t broken. Your middle is frozen. And that’s the lever to pull.

Leaders who fix the middle don’t just launch strategy, they unleash it. The middle won’t fix itself. The real question is: are you ready to empower your middle managers?