Business|04-07-2026

When unity slows strategy

Top-down strategies are often communicated with great effort: roadshows, slide decks, clear messages. And yet, in the months that follow, surprisingly little often happens. An empirical article in the Journal of Business Research highlights an underestimated lever: it is not only middle managers’ own stance that matters, but above all what they believe about the stance of their colleagues.

What is it about?

The authors examine strategy implementation from the perspective of middle managers in a German industrial context. The core point: when a strategy remains unclear in day-to-day work, middle managers look for orientation in lateral conversations. There, a picture emerges of whether others support or reject the strategy. This picture influences whether people take first steps or wait.

What are “shared realities” and “separate realities”?

The study uses two interesting concepts:

• Shared realities: Middle managers subjectively experience that they share a common view of the strategy with other middle managers. It is about a felt sense of commonality, not objectively measurable consensus.
• Separate realities: Middle managers subjectively experience that other middle managers think or feel differently about the strategy. Here too, it is the subjective perception of difference that matters.

Important: In the case study, the data suggest that many middle managers viewed the strategy rather critically. What still proved decisive was whether they perceived this critical stance as “shared” or “not shared”.

What does “sensemaking” mean in this context?

Sensemaking means that people construct a plausible explanation in social interactions of what is going on and how they should behave. In this study, the focus is specific: middle managers make sense not only of the strategy itself, but also of their peers’ presumed attitudes toward the strategy.

What does the study show?

The study examined the implementation of a top-down strategy at one plant of a multinational German engineering company (around 3,800 employees). Data were collected about one year after the strategy communication. In total, 21 interviews were conducted (10 semi-structured, 11 informal), supplemented by extensive documents and media materials for triangulation (including strategy documents and numerous articles and internal newsletters). The analysis follows a qualitative abductive approach, informed by grounded theory coding.

Finding one: Ambiguity creates “fog” and drives peer orientation.

Middle managers experience the strategy as ambiguous and difficult to translate into concrete implications for the site and departments. In this state, conversations with colleagues become the most important source of orientation.

Finding two: Peer interpretations give rise to “shared” or “separate” realities.

Some middle managers come away from conversations with the feeling: “We all see it similarly.” Others experience: “The others think differently.” This subjective categorization emerges in interaction and does not have to match actual differences.

Finding three: The counterintuitive practical crux.

In the case studied, shared realities were associated with inactivity in strategy implementation, whereas separate realities were associated with initial implementation actions.

The message is uncomfortable for classic “alignment” reflexes: depending on the mood, more felt consensus among middle managers can also stabilize collective waiting.

What follows for practice?

Do not only measure alignment, diagnose “perceived consensus”: In implementation, do not only ask “Are you aligned?”, but also: “How do you think the other middle managers see the strategy?” and “What makes you think that?” If the answers differ widely, that is not noise but an early indicator that the social reality of implementation is diverging.

Reduce ambiguity deliberately before corridor talk replaces it: The study shows that ambiguity is a central trigger for peer sensemaking. Practically, that means translating the strategy early into 3 to 5 concrete implications per area (priorities, non-goals, first deliverables). Make the role of the site, function, or business unit explicit, because that “What does this mean for us?” gap is exactly what fuels waiting.

Make differences productive instead of smoothing them reflexively: If “separate realities” are more closely linked to first actions, it is worth creating a controlled space for differences: formats in which different interpretations are explicitly allowed to stand side by side (for example, structured counter-positions, pre-mortems, option comparisons). The goal is not conflict, but the ability to act despite different readings.

Move from conversations to micro-commitments: A typical engine of stagnation is lots of talk, little starting. A consistent countermeasure: every alignment meeting ends with a visible first step.

Create visibility of action to generate new social signals: If middle managers strongly align their behavior with presumed peer attitudes, visible activity becomes a steering instrument: short implementation updates, demos, internal showcases. This reduces the interpretive work of figuring out “whether anyone is actually getting started”.

Conclusion

Strategy implementation is not only a planning and communication problem, but also a social perception problem. In the study, it was precisely the felt sense of commonality among middle managers that could stabilize inactivity. In practice, that means reducing ambiguity, making differences deliberately visible and workable, and translating conversations consistently into first steps.

Source:
Schuler, B. A., Orr, K., & Hughes, J. (2023). My colleagues (do not) think the same: Middle managers’ shared and separate realities in strategy implementation. Journal of Business Research, 160, 113782. doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2023.113782