Why Good Ideas Stall

Context

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s call for a renewed focus on execution has stayed with us.

“For too long, when federal agencies have examined a new project, their immediate question has been ‘why?’ (…) We will instead ask ourselves ‘how?’” he said last month.

We’ve been thinking about that ever since — and seeing it play out in the conversations we’re having with leaders working to turn bold ideas into reality.

The reality is that our public systems were designed for compliance and risk management, not rapid execution. But they can adapt –we saw it during the pandemic when teams rallied around a shared mission.

One way to spark that shift is to bake delivery into the strategy from day one. Asking “why?” isn’t wrong — but the answers need to surface what will be required to deliver.

Insight

The gap between a brilliant strategy and real-world results isn't about the quality of the idea—it's about how well it's been designed for delivery.

Most good ideas stall because they haven't been built to survive contact with the real world.

But how could we expect public leaders to design for delivery when:

• Risk‑aversion drives a preference for exhaustive planning over real‑time learning.
• Cultural norms reward documentation and compliance more than experimentation.
• Public sector leaders answer to elected officials, oversight bodies, unions, media, and citizens—all with different priorities and timelines.
• Public sector organizations are often under-resourced for change management. They have enough capacity to run existing programs but not enough to thoughtfully redesign them. Leaders are forced to choose between maintaining current services and improving them.

Designing for delivery requires a completely different approach.

Insight in Practice

If we change how we think about delivery—not top-down but built together—we can make the best of the current political momentum.

But designing for delivery is a complex concept.

That’s why we’re dedicating our next series to making it tangible. We’re launching the “How Change Gets Made” multi-format campaign next week, 13th of August.

Over  the next few weeks, you'll get:

• The 5 Opus Group Design Principles that help big ideas take hold.
• Real-world case studies from our work alongside unions, regulators, service providers, and public institutions.
• Practical tools and frameworks to help you do more with less — now a core expectation in today’s environment.

And we’re taking the conversation beyond the page: we’ll be continuing this dialogue at the IPAC’s Annual National Public Service Symposium where we're hosting a session on Adaptive Policy Design for a Changing World – one of the core themes of How Change Gets Made.

See the full agenda of the event here.

If you’ll be at IPAC, join us in exploring how to turn ambitious strategies into outcomes that stick.

Perspectives

Research backs up what we see in practice: success in execution isn't about perfect planning, it's about adaptive capacity.

A Harvard Kennedy School study of large-scale public sector reforms found that projects with built-in learning mechanisms were 40% more likely to achieve their intended outcomes than those following rigid implementation plans.

"The most successful reforms weren't the most carefully planned—they were the most responsive to real-world feedback."—Matthew Andrews, Doing Development Differently

This aligns with broader thinking about system design for accountability. As noted in The Other Invisible Hand, effective systems create incentives where users can choose providers and providers compete: "If the money follows the choices of parents of hospitals or schools, then the hospital or school that provides better service will gain resources; that which provides inferior service will lose."

The evidence is consistent: the best strategies aren't the most detailed—they're designed with built-in accountability mechanisms that respond to the messy realities of the real world.

Question to Consider

What good idea in your organization has stalled, and what would change if you approached it as a delivery challenge rather than a strategy problem?

Quote of The Week

"In the end, the most important thing about a strategy is not how elegant it looks on paper, but how well it survives contact with reality."
— Roger Martin