I recently found myself in the emergency room of our local county hospital. Each nurse, doctor, and technician I interacted with was exemplary—professional, kind, efficient, and clearly very skilled and motivated. Yet the experience as a whole was frustrating, with unreasonably long wait times and poor communication.
As I sat there, the quote from W. Edwards Deming kept running through my head:
"A bad system will beat a good person every time."
This wasn’t a people problem. It was a systems problem. And it’s one that plagues not just healthcare but many organisations.
The Limits of Talent Without Structure
It’s tempting to say that business is all about people. After all, great people are the ones who come up with ideas, solve problems, and serve customers. But people alone are not enough.
You need systems that enable those people to succeed: workflows that reduce friction, feedback loops that promote learning, and tools that help everyone operate at their best. You need strategy to align all of this to a common goal.
Without these, even the most talented individuals will struggle. They’ll duplicate work, miss handovers, and waste time battling bureaucracy—just like I saw in that ER.
Strategy Is the Bridge Between People and Performance
That’s where strategy comes in. Not just as a plan on paper, but as a framework for execution. A good strategy ensures that the right people are in the right roles, working within systems that support rather than stifle their abilities. A good strategy focuses on the outcomes you want to achieve and works out how to create the systems and circumstances that allow people to achieve them.
This is especially vital in complex, high-stakes environments: hospitals, banks, consultancies, or startups trying to scale. When performance matters most, systems and strategy also matter most.
So next time you see a brilliant team failing to deliver, don’t assume it’s the people. Ask instead: what system are they working within? And how can you design a better one?
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