Drift doesn’t happen because people are off track. It happens because good people are making rational decisions without a clear reference point for the work.

You’ve already done the hard leadership work. You have a clear strategy. It’s been shaped by your leadership team, communicated across the organisation, and understood by capable people who are energised to deliver.

And yet, over time, execution drifts. Not in one moment. You’d see that. It happens gradually.

Like a game of telephone, everyone intends to carry the same message forward. But small changes along the way compound. The output no longer matches the direction you set. 

Why don’t we see it while it’s happening?

Because nothing feels wrong.

The strategy hasn’t broken. Instead, it fragments across dozens or hundreds of small decisions that all make sense in the moment. Each one is rational. Each one is locally correct. But together, they take you off course.

It’s like riding a bike. A small turn of the handlebars barely registers at first. But left unchecked, that slight shift becomes a complete change in direction.

Once your strategy moves into execution, it has to be applied to the work of each team. And this is where drift begins.

Without a clear reference point for the work, your people interpret the strategy as they go. They decide what it means for how they perform, how they respond to pressure, and how they prioritise.

Each decision tests the reference point they’re using.

Work moves across teams. From sales through to delivery, each step adding value. Teams respond to customer needs, local pressures and real-world constraints. More decisions, all reasonable.

The product is delivered. The customer is satisfied. In that moment, there isn’t a problem.

But the drift is already there.

It doesn’t feel like a problem because each decision made sense in isolation. By the time it shows up in results, the way the work is being done already reflects a different version of your strategy.

So what do you do? 

You meet the drift where it happens.

Strategy isn’t complete until it becomes actionable at the level where decisions are made. The reference point needs to move from strategy into the work itself. This means getting specific.

Each team needs to define what good looks like for their part of the business. Not in theory, but in the context of their work, their processes, and the decisions they make every day.

Leaders guide this. They challenge, refine, and ensure the intent of the strategy holds as it becomes local.

Then the question shifts: how will we know if we’re succeeding?  This is where measures of success matter. Not just outcomes, but the drivers of those outcomes. The signals that shape behaviour and inform decisions.

Now the reference point sits where the work happens. You’ve created a way to check, adjust, and stay aligned before drift compounds.

Because drift will still happen. But now you can see it earlier. You can respond sooner. You can course correct while it’s still small.

And there’s an upside.  Not all drift is bad. 

When you have the right structure in place, those signals can tell you something more. They can show where customer needs are shifting. Where the market is changing. Where your strategy may need to evolve.

That’s when drift becomes a choice.