Strategy Activation
We know our strategic goals. We just aren’t getting them executed!
Explore strategy activationExperts in Strategy Activation
We activate strategy
through leadership.
Strategies rarely fail because of the plan. They fail because, in day-to-day work, other things become more important. MLI supports leadership teams in aligning thinking and action so that strategic intentions turn into measurable results.
MLI at a glance
- 150+
- leadership teams supported
- 1,500+
- board members, managing directors and senior executives advised and coached
- 20,000+
- participants in leadership formats
- 100
- experts, coaches and trainers in our network
Internal records, as of August 2026.
For procurement: contract, fees, credentials80%
80% of a company’s performance is shaped by leadership behavior. The failure rarely lies in the analysis — it lies in the dynamics of leadership and strategy execution.
Sources: MLI survey 2023 (250+ leaders), drawing on McKinsey, Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick (2018) and the World Management Survey (2021). The conclusion is ours.
What we offer
Our offer: four paths to effective leadership.
Start by assessing the status quo. If you recognize yourself in one of the four statements, the path leads to the right page.
AI Transformation
Everyone is talking about AI. Everyone is doing their own thing. How do we set this up wisely?
Explore AI transformationCoaching
Individual challenges or conflicts are holding back the effectiveness of leadership.
Explore leadership coachingLeadership Development
We have good leaders, but together they do not deliver what they could.
Explore leadership developmentThe bottleneck
Attention is the greatest bottleneck to effective leadership.
Never before have so many stimuli competed for a form of attention that is, neurologically, strictly limited. What receives no attention does not happen — no matter how well it was planned.
Your executive team has adopted the strategy. Two thirds of the workforce cannot explain it, let alone their own contribution to it. This is why nine out of ten strategic initiatives fall short of expectations.
The transformation has been communicated many times over, and still it is not moving. More communication will not solve that.
Strategy, leadership behavior and change are not separate topics but a single chain of cause and effect. Only when they are connected does momentum arise.
Why strategy execution fails
Four reasons. All four have to do with leadership.
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Lack of practical relevance, excessive complexity72%
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Communication and comprehension problems63%
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Conflicting goals and interests38%
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Unclear roles30%
MLI survey 2023, more than 250 executives: standardized questionnaire for all respondents plus selected in-depth interviews. Multiple answers possible.
The impact model
From the adopted strategy
to demonstrable impact.
01 Starting point
The strategic goal is known
It is usually clear what matters. But the strategy does not reach the levels where action is required.
02 Bottleneck
Attention is scarce
Countless meetings, endless coordination. Day-to-day business does everything it can to prevent effective execution.
03 Lever
Leadership focuses
Through its own behavior, and by giving key people maximum room to deliver results.
04 Effect
Social dynamics change
When those affected know their concrete contribution and experience self-efficacy instead of exclusion.
05 Result
Intentions become results
Through a shared rhythm, clear accountabilities and an effective leadership system.
Strategy
Leadershipdevelopment
Organizationaldevelopment
Change
Social dynamics
Social dynamics?
Leadership shapes social dynamics. And companies with strong social dynamics adapt faster and are more profitable over the long run.
Leadership behavior is a social dynamic in itself, and it shapes the other seven decisively.
“Social dynamics — haven’t culture consultancies been selling that for thirty years?”
Culture surveys assess the state of an organization. We measure what leadership changes about it — eight dynamics, surveyed before and after specific interventions. In between, the leadership team works on the gaps.
The ambition behind it: a results-oriented performance culture. Because nothing in working life is more satisfying than experiencing meaning and self-efficacy.
The evidence
Impact that can be measured.
+105%Leadership Effectiveness (from 36 to 73 points)
+56%Employee engagement
24 7months time to market
How it was measured. Example: digital transformation at a leading insurance group. Standardized survey of all participants as part of the Employee Engagement Survey, Likert scale from 0 to 10, before the start and after fifteen months, n = 3,500. The Leadership Effectiveness Index measures trust in the strategy and in the leadership team; the engagement scores come from the same survey.
Time to market measures the span from a strategically relevant requirement to its availability to customers — here, for product features of a software company.
Evidence from practice
Two cases, four voices.
What happened in concrete engagements, and what the clients said afterwards.
Two examples
Case 01
Digital transformation at an insurance group
- Starting point
- The need for a global reorganization, and for enablement and activation as part of the digital transformation.
- Approach
- Survey of the social dynamics, in-depth interviews and panels, development of an activating target picture, workshops on the moments of truth, targeted training.
- Result
- A new self-confidence — “we lead at the Digital Olympics.” Trust in the leadership team doubled. Employee engagement rose by 56% despite headcount reductions.
Case 02
Post-merger execution in telecommunications
- Starting point
- Merger of a telecommunications provider with a network operator.
- Approach
- Comparison of leadership styles and social dynamics, development of an activating vision, mission and roadmap. First, all leaders clarify their roles and success factors. Then activation workshops with their teams to determine each team’s contribution to overall success — led by the leaders themselves.
- Result
- Employees’ understanding of the strategy up 56% within three months. A sense of “we” in the leadership circle.
A further case — a scale-up in the software industry — is described in the institute dossier (PDF).
What our clients say
MLI — you rock!
Working with MLI helps us pool our strengths as a team, set the right priorities and maximize our impact as top management.
Working with MLI inspires me and gives me the courage to try new things and to grow in my impact. A real gain!
In working with MLI, our leaders are especially enthusiastic about the good, practice-oriented examples and the speakers so well matched to us.
Further clients (selection)
Quick test · free · no sign-up
The leadership coaching quick testTwelve statements, about three minutes. You will see immediately in which of four leadership areas coaching can make the biggest difference for you — your answers are not stored. Please rate each statement as honestly as you can.
Our approach (illustrative)
Four phases. Each has a value of its own.
Our approaches are always designed to strengthen the execution of your strategy — fitted to your leadership situation, using the most effective methods. Every phase ends with a result that has value in its own right.
- Assessment Survey of the status quo and the social dynamics. Stakeholder interviews. Success factors of collaboration. Measurement of the baseline. The result is a diagnosis, not a sales proposal. 2–6 weeks
- Target picture and design A target picture worth striving for: what exactly is supposed to improve? Development of a narrative that wins attention. Specification of the success factors. Derivation of the most effective leadership interventions. 3–8 weeks
- Activation Delivery with the experts of the MLI network. Alignment of expectations. Clarification of jobs and accountabilities. Every participant internalizes their own contribution to overall success. 2–18 months
- Embedding Enabling internal multipliers and handing over to them; repeating the survey. Regular impact analysis and supervision. Documentation for your governing bodies. ongoing
Our experts and coaches
In the end, it is people who work with you — not an institute.
Some one hundred curated coaches, experts and specialists belong to the network — connected by their own leadership experience and a practical focus on goals. Here are four examples; you will find all the others under About.
Executive advisory and top executive coaching since 2011, close collaboration with more than 120 leadership teams. Author of the book Expedition Zukunft, host of the podcast Tiefgang (Spotify), founding member of the Zukunftsallianz Mensch & KI. A person who looks for meaning — at home by Lake Ammersee.
Leadership is like an expedition. You need a destination worth striving for and a joy in adventure.
Former Berlin correspondent for Tagesschau and ARTE, psychologist. Works with executives on presence and credible communication.
What you wish to ignite in others must burn within yourself. (Augustine)
Studied medicine; research and doctorate in genetic neurosciences at the University of Munich, University College London and Stanford University. Alongside his main work as a psychiatrist and expert witness, he translates scientific findings into concepts that leaders can use.
What happens between people can be described, and changed.
Some twenty years of coaching. Clarity of goals, effective communication, an understanding of group dynamics and the leadership role. Conflict management. Strengthening women in leadership roles is a particular concern of hers.
Be yourself. Create your life. Achieve your goals.
Three paths
Three ways to clarify an initiative.
All three lead to people, not to a queue. We answer e-mails within two business days.
30 minutes
Personal conversation
A first meeting, an exchange about your needs, not a sales pitch. Choose a time directly in the calendar, with no intermediate step and at no cost.
Choose a time Five fields · reply within two business daysContact by e-mail
Describe your topic briefly: one or two sentences are enough. We reply within two business days.
Prefer to talk? +49 8807 244446-0
Institute dossier
Services, approach, evidence, expert profiles, fees and terms — for forwarding internally when an initiative still needs to be justified.
Download the dossierQuestions and answers
Strategy activation
and strategy execution.
The questions that come before every engagement — answered briefly.
What is strategy activation?
Strategy activation is the process of turning a strategic objective or strategy into the behavior it requires in everyday work. It makes sure that leaders and employees can tell the same story about the future of their company, name their own contribution and act accordingly in the situations that count. Unlike strategy communication, it is measured against concrete results and focuses on the moments of truth in which changed behavior makes the intended difference.
How does strategy activation differ from strategy execution?
Strategy activation adds to conventional execution — project steering, metrics, resources — what cognitive research and group dynamics contribute. It directs attention, understanding and leadership behavior toward concrete strategic objectives. Without it, execution remains a reporting exercise: the spreadsheets are up to date, the behavior is unchanged. Strategy activation draws on validated, effective interventions and leadership methods.
Why do strategic initiatives fail so often?
Nine out of ten strategic initiatives fall short of expectations. The most frequent reasons are a lack of practical relevance and unrealistic expectations, with the communication and comprehension problems that follow, along with conflicting goals and interests and unclear roles. All of them have to do with leadership; none with the quality of the strategy itself.
How long does a strategy activation take?
The assessment takes two to six weeks, the target picture and design three to eight weeks. The activation itself runs two to eighteen months, depending on size; the embedding is ongoing. Each phase can be commissioned separately.
How can success be measured?
Against measures defined before the start: understanding of the strategy, trust in the strategy and the leadership team, engagement, plus the business metrics of the particular initiative. Collected either in the annual employee survey or in separate surveys, before the start and afterwards, using the same version of the questionnaire. After a merger, understanding of the strategy rose by 56% within three months. In a digitalization strategy, confidence in strategy and leadership more than doubled. In addition, we report the number of objectives and key results achieved over time.
What size of organization is this suited to?
The approach works across industries and sizes: from a start-up with a founding team through scale-ups to larger mid-sized companies and corporations with several thousand employees. In Western and Central Europe, the United States, Latin America and Asia, in several languages where needed. The entry point is usually the assessment phase — it produces a diagnosis that has value in its own right.
For procurement
Contract, fees, credentials —
before the conversation begins.
Most providers in this market make you ask for them. With us, they are on a page of their own, ready to forward internally.