The Strategy Activation Playbook: A Practical Approach to Bringing Your Strategies to Life

Organizations spend over ＄160 billion a year hiring consultants to develop and execute strategies, and yet 80 percent of corporate strategies fail.

Why? Because we forget the most important factor in successfully executing strategy: People.

Our old models of change management and strategy execution assume that organizations are monolithic and can move directly from strategy-making to strategy-doing. But the modern organization is made up of increasingly more diverse, empowered, and free-thinking people, and we need to evolve how we launch our strategies to ensure we engage, align, and empower diverse groups of people to move forward together. If you want to be part of the 20 percent of leaders who succeed, then you need a new playbook for bringing your strategy to life.

With The Strategy Activation Playbook, author Aric Wood, CEO of XPLANE, teaches you how to do what he’s helped organizations around the world accomplish: align and activate the people in your organization to execute your strategy and realize your vision.

Inside, leaders will find in these pages a clear methodology for:

Communicating a strategy in such a way that everyone understands it, sees how it benefits them, and becomes willing to take the journey

Equipping employees with the tools and training that enable new ways of working

Embedding a strategy as ＂the new way of work＂ that everyone can embrace

The Strategy Activation Playbook is the indispensable desk reference to strategy activation, and is filled with practical tools, exercises, and methods you can implement immediately to align your teams and empower individuals to move forward together toward a common goal.

Aric Wood is the CEO of global design consultancy XPLANE, where he leads the firm’s Strategy Activation practice. XPLANE has developed a unique approach to leveraging human-centered design, visual thinking, and co-creation to help engage, align, and activate people to bring their strategies to life. With over 25 years of experience working with over 100 of the Fortune 500, as well as federal and local governments, non-profit organizations, and global NGOs, Aric has a unique perspective on what it takes to successfully lead change through people in organizations of all sizes.

Aric has shared his experience and knowledge as an author, a keynote speaker, a university instructor, and has served on numerous commercial and non-profit boards, including The Design Museum Foundation and the Pacific Northwest College of Arts (PNCA). He previously served in leadership roles at Intuit and Epinions.com, and as a strategy consultant at Bain & Company. Aric earned a bachelor’s degree in International Relations from The Johns Hopkins University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.