Why Most Strategy Execution Fails and How Healthcare PMOs Fix It | Featuring Mike Janzen - Strategy Execution
🚀 New Episode Alert Practitioners Unfiltered Ep. 8 is now live on Strategy eXecution Unlocked!
In this series on the Strategy eXecution Unlocked podcast, Ben Chamberlain sits down with the founding members of The Strategy eXecution Forum. These leaders and practitioners span diverse roles, functions, and industries, all united by a common mission: helping their organizations effectively bridge the gap between strategy and execution.
Episode 8: Why Most Strategy Execution Fails and How Healthcare PMOs Fix It | Featuring Mike Janzen
Ben recently sat down with Mike Janzen, a transformation executive with over 20 years of experience applying Big Five management consulting techniques to help organizations scale growth through disciplined strategy development, planning, and execution. Mike spent nearly two decades as a Governance and Enterprise PMO Executive at a major health system, leading strategic oversight of projects, programs, and portfolios across the entire organization, including its outsource partners.
Mike is COBIT 5, PMP, and ITIL certified, and applies Lean Six Sigma techniques to help organizations accomplish more with the resources they already have. He is also a Council and Founding Member of the Strategy eXecution Forum, actively helping build the community to elevate Strategy Execution to a true C-suite imperative.
Watch a short clip below and become a StrategyXF member to access the full episode.
Mike's Central Message
Mike's central message is that Strategy Execution fails not because organizations lack a strategy, but because demand outpaces capacity, funding flows to the wrong work, and nobody tracks where the value leaks. The "quick favor" that never gets sized, the project broken into small pieces to duck the funding line, and the initiative nobody dares to kill all quietly drain the resources that strategic work needs. Mike's answer is disciplined demand management and a continuous planning cadence, built on transparency so people at every level know what is a priority and have permission to say no to what is not. The organizations that get this right treat AI as an accelerator for well-defined processes, not a substitute for them.
Key Highlights from Our Unfiltered Conversation
🎻 The Orchestra Problem Many people, many instruments, one score. Mike explains why Strategy Execution breaks down when functions aren't playing their part at the right moment, and why the stats on failure haven't moved in years.
💸 Easy Funding Is a Silent Killer When it's too easy to get money for non-strategic work, resource drift follows. Mike shares how unsized requests multiply across an organization until the true cost of value erosion is massive.
🏥 Lessons from the Healthcare Front Line Compliance deadlines that jump the queue, infrastructure nobody wants to fund, and the "apples vs. oranges" challenge of prioritizing across business units. Mike walks through what two decades inside a large health system taught him about sequencing, not just go or no-go decisions.
🎯 Principle 5, Capture and Qualify Demand Draw the funding line too high and people break programs into small pieces to get under it. Mike explains how that turns 20 large initiatives into hundreds of small ones, and why separating strategic and operational resources matters.
🔄 Principle 6, Continuously Optimize the Strategic Roadmap Annual planning doesn't work. Mike makes the case for monthly reviews as the bare minimum, a continuous loop for unplanned priorities, and why initiatives that should have been killed years earlier are still running.
🚫 Give People Permission to Say No A documented, traceable demand process gives people at the operational level a simple answer when unapproved work shows up. Mike shares how a work ID requirement protected resources from drift.
🪑 Give the Chief Strategy Officer a Seat at the Table Hand project managers a list of the wrong initiatives and they can execute them perfectly. Mike explains why strategy leaders need to be involved early enough to make strategy executable.
🤖 AI Will Accelerate Strategy Execution Mike sees AI reducing the burden of capturing and synthesizing demand against capacity, but only where processes are already well defined. Culture and the human in the loop stay essential.
If you're a CEO, C-suite executive, strategy leader, transformation professional, or anyone serious about closing the gap between strategy and results, this episode delivers candid, practitioner-led insight you can apply immediately, regardless of industry.
Become a member and access and watch the full episode!
The Importance of Community in Strategy Execution
Massive thanks to Mike for his candor, depth of experience, and passion for elevating Strategy Execution to a true C-suite imperative. More unfiltered conversations with Strategy eXecution Forum founding members are coming soon! 🚀
The Strategy eXecution Forum (StrategyXF) is an invite-only, no-fee professional community built by and for the practitioners who know firsthand how hard it is to close the persistent gap between strategy and results. We believe it takes a village to master strategy execution. This is why StrategyXF brings together senior leaders from across the enterprise: C-suite executives, Strategy & Operations leaders, Transformation Offices, Finance, HR, IT, PMO, Enterprise Risk, Change Management, Portfolio Management, Business Architecture, and more.
Together, members collaborate on real-world challenges, share battle-tested approaches, and shape the future of how organizations execute with discipline and impact. This isn't a passive network; it's a practitioner-led community where your experience adds real value. Every discussion is designed to deliver practical ideas you can apply right away. If you are serious about elevating strategy execution as a mission-critical discipline, we invite you to apply to become a member and help us build something the profession has long needed.
More unfiltered conversations with Strategy eXecution Forum founders are coming soon! 🚀
