The org chart is the strategy

A company writes its marketing strategy down twice: once in the deck and once in the org chart. Only the second one gets executed.

The deck says brand-led. The org chart has one brand person reporting to a performance director with a team of eight. The deck says customer-first. Nobody in the building owns the customer after the sale; there is an acquisition team and a retention line in a spreadsheet.

The org chart is where the real choices were made, usually by whoever was in the room when the last hire was approved. It is the strategy that actually runs, because the people in it wake up every morning and do what their box says, whatever the deck says.

I have seen this from inside enough structures to stop being surprised by it. A plan that depends on the customer after the sale, in a company where no box owns that customer, is a hope, however tidy its timeline. A plan that calls itself brand-led, where the one brand person cannot approve a line of spend, has already decided its own ceiling.

So the useful reading of any strategy is to hold it next to the structure and look for the gaps. Where the deck promises something nobody's box is responsible for, that is the thing that will not happen. Where the structure has weight the deck does not mention, that is what will happen instead.

Reorganising is the only strategic decision most companies ever actually make, and it is usually announced as housekeeping.