Hire a Speaker on Strategy Drift for Leadership Events
For most of my career, I assumed the hard part of strategy was getting it right. If the thinking was sound and the plan had been approved, I took it for granted that the rest would follow from hard work.
Twenty-six years and four very different schools of execution taught me otherwise. The strategies I watched falter were rarely wrong, and nobody abandoned them on purpose. They faded a little each quarter, while everyone involved stayed busy and the reports kept looking healthy.
That slow fade is what I call strategy drift. It is the subject of my book, and it is the reason I built a keynote around it.
Why Most Leadership Events Miss Strategy Drift
When performance stalls, the instinct is to book someone who can lift the room. I understand that instinct. A good motivational speaker can send a leadership team back to work with more energy than it arrived with. The trouble is that drift has very little to do with energy. The leadership teams I see drifting are rarely short of effort, and most of them are working extremely hard.
Drift is difficult to tackle because nobody chooses it. There is rarely a meeting where a leadership team decides to walk away from its strategy. Small, sensible trade-offs pile up instead, and each one is easy to defend on the day it is made.
I should be honest that I didn’t see this for most of my own career. I was as busy as everyone around me, and I mistook that movement for progress. A strategy drift keynote has to start from that admission, because your audience is living it too, and what they need is a way to see it clearly.
What the Drift Happens Keynote Covers
The keynote starts by explaining why drift happens at all, and the answer has less to do with organisations than with people. Two very human tendencies sit underneath it.
The first is that we are wired to add. Faced with a problem, people instinctively reach for something new, whether an initiative, a report or a committee, and rarely think to take something away. The second is that attention is limited. Leaders can only hold a handful of priorities in mind at once, however capable they are, so every addition quietly thins the focus on what was already there.
From there, the talk introduces the discipline I developed to counter both tendencies, and closes with practical actions tailored to the audience in the room.
The keynote runs for 45 minutes, which means it fits into a board strategy session, an executive offsite or a conference programme without taking over the day.
The Five Moves of FOCUS5™
The second half of the talk introduces FOCUS5™, the discipline at the centre of my book, Drift Happens. I call it a discipline on purpose. A framework is something you consult, and drift is only held back by things leaders keep doing, week after week.
FRAME limits the strategic agenda to three to five vital bets for the year and protects that boundary.
OWN gives every bet a single owner and makes clear what that person is allowed to decide.
CADENCE sets one predictable rhythm for reviewing strategic work, frequent enough to catch drift early.
UNBLOCK makes removing obstacles somebody’s job, with the authority to do it.
SUSTAIN builds the discipline into how the organisation works, so that it outlasts the people who launched it.
The five moves are designed to work together, and in my experience drift settles wherever one of them is missing.
Choosing a Conference Speaker on Execution Gaps
If I were booking a speaker on this topic, I would look past stage presence first. Meeting Professionals International advises choosing speakers on how well they serve the event’s objectives, and for execution that means checking whether the person has actually carried a strategy through an organisation or has only advised on one.
My own answer to that question is twenty-six years spent inside four schools of execution, twenty of those years in financial services: a bank with its own delivery methodology, two large ERP environments, and global management consulting across eleven African markets. Each taught me something different about how big plans get delivered. FOCUS5™ came later, when I stepped back and asked what all four had taught me about keeping a strategy on track.
The other thing worth checking is fit. Ask any speaker how their approach would diagnose the specific kind of drift your organisation is living with. If they can’t answer that, expect the effect of the talk to wear off within a week.
Who This Strategy Execution Talk Is For
This is a strategy execution talk for executives who already have a strategy and are struggling to make it stick. It works best with boards, executive committees and senior leadership teams, and at conferences where the audience is responsible for delivery. If your organisation plans well and keeps missing its execution targets, this is the gap the talk is built to address.
It is a poor fit for an early-stage startup still looking for product-market fit, or for a business in the middle of a crisis turnaround. FOCUS5™ assumes you already know where you are trying to go. The work it does is keeping you on that course once the launch energy has faded.
How to Book a Strategy Drift Keynote
Every booking starts with a conversation about your event and your organisation, because drift shows up differently from one leadership team to the next. I use that conversation to tailor the talk’s closing actions to the people who will be in the room.
You can see formats and logistics on my speaking page, or get in touch about your event to check availability.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much do strategy execution speakers charge in South Africa?
Fees vary with the format, the amount of tailoring involved and travel. Because I adapt the talk to each audience, I quote per engagement. Send me your event details and I’ll come back with a proposal.
How is a strategy drift keynote different from a motivational talk?
A motivational talk works on energy and mindset. A strategy drift keynote looks at why plans erode after they have been approved, and gives leaders a practical discipline for holding their focus, with actions they can take into their next leadership meeting.
Can the talk be adapted for audiences outside financial services?
Yes. Most of my career has been in financial services, but drift happens in every kind of organisation, and the talk draws on examples from well beyond banking. We adjust the emphasis to your sector during the planning conversation.
How far in advance should we book a strategy execution speaker?
As early as you can. Leadership calendars fill quickly around financial year-end and conference season, and the planning conversation needs time to happen before the event.
Nkululeko Khumalo is the author of Drift Happens: How FOCUS5™ Keeps Strategy on Track, available in print, ebook and audiobook, and the creator of BizLit. He speaks to boards, executive teams and conferences on why strategies drift and how to keep them on track.
