When building a marketing strategy, it’s natural to want input from various team members.

After all, diverse perspectives can help shape a more comprehensive strategy, right?

However, there’s a line between gathering insights and allowing too many voices to dictate the strategy. Without strong leadership and a streamlined decision-making process, the result is often a bloated, unfocused plan that no one believes in—or worse, one that never sees the light of day.

Creating a strategy should lead to clarity, confidence, and ROI—not complexity.

Overcrowding the Table: Why More Isn’t Always Better in Strategy

A strategy created by committee has good intentions—usually aiming to capture a holistic view of the business. But more often than not, the outcome is messy. Here’s what happens when too many people are involved in making strategic decisions:

• Unclear Objectives and Lack of Focus: When every stakeholder’s opinion has equal weight, the strategy becomes a patchwork of competing priorities.
  
  
• Contradicting Goals: Different departments and leaders will have different, and sometimes opposing, priorities. The marketing team wants brand awareness, while the sales team is focused on lead generation. Trying to cater to both equally results in a diluted message.
  
  
• Endless Iterations and Delayed Decisions: With so many opinions to consider, approval processes drag on. Each round of feedback leads to another set of revisions, often taking the strategy in new, unplanned directions.
  
  
• Strategy Paralysis: (also known as analysis paralysis) When no one is willing to be the final decision-maker, the process grinds to a halt. The result? A beautiful plan that exists only in a document, never to be executed.

Impact on the Organization

When a strategy by committee fails, it’s more than just a poor plan—it’s a loss of time, resources, and momentum. Teams become frustrated, leadership’s credibility is questioned, and the organization struggles to achieve alignment. Marketing departments lose confidence, and other teams are left unsure of what direction to take, leading to inconsistent execution and wasted efforts.

The Underlying Issues: Why It Happens

So why do so many organizations fall into the trap of creating strategies by committee?

1. Leadership Avoidance: Leaders may be hesitant to make tough decisions and share accountability. Bringing in more voices can feel like sharing the responsibility.
   
   
2. Fear of Missing Out (FOMO): Leaders often want to include every voice to avoid missing any key insights or upsetting influential team members.
   
   
3. Lack of Clarity in Roles: When there’s no clear distinction between contributors, decision-makers, and approvers, confusion reigns.
   
   
4. Overemphasis on Consensus: Trying to make everyone happy results in compromises that water down the strategy, making it less potent and more difficult to implement.

The Consequences: When Strategy by Committee Fails

When there are too many voices, the result is often a strategy that lacks focus and fails to connect with the team.

1. Watered-Down Strategy: The strategy loses its potency when compromises are made at every turn. Instead of clear objectives, it becomes a “catch-all” plan that lacks specificity and power.
   
   
2. Confusion in Execution: Teams don’t know which elements to prioritize, and that confusion translates to missed goals and poor performance.
   
   
3. Increased Resistance: Ironically, the more input gathered, the more resistance there is to implementation. Why? Because no one truly feels ownership. They feel their ideas were either dismissed or altered beyond recognition.

Solution: Creating a Strategy with Clarity and Confidence

The antidote to a strategy by committee isn’t cutting out voices but creating structure and leadership that channels insights effectively. Here’s how:

1. Identify the Right Decision-Makers:

   • Clearly define who is responsible for decision-making and who is simply providing input. Using a RACI matrix (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) can help clarify roles and expectations.
     
     

2. Clarify Strategic Objectives Early On:

   • Start with a clear understanding of what success looks like. Define the goals, target audience, and desired outcomes before any strategy session. This anchors the discussion and prevents deviation.
     
     

3. Prioritize Data and Insight Over Opinions:

   • Encourage decisions rooted in data and customer needs rather than internal opinions. Too often, strategies are derailed by “gut feelings” and subjective preferences.
     
     

4. Design a Communication and Execution Roadmap:

   • Lay out a detailed plan that includes milestones, responsibility points, and accountability measures. This ensures that every contributor knows where their input fits into the broader strategy.
     
     

5. Leadership Accountability:

   • Leaders need to take ultimate responsibility for the strategy. That means making tough calls, choosing a direction, and standing by it. Without clear leadership, there’s no direction.

Real-World Example: When Strategy by Committee Went Wrong

Several years ago, a Fortune 500 company attempted to create a marketing strategy that incorporated input from every department head, from IT to HR. The idea was to build a strategy that every leader could champion. The result? A 100-page document that included more goals than could be tracked, campaigns for audiences they weren’t targeting, and tactics that contradicted each other.

When the first campaign launched, it failed spectacularly, leaving everyone wondering where it went wrong. After a post-mortem analysis, the company realized the issue wasn’t lack of ideas—it was too many ideas. A revised plan, created by a focused leadership team, cut down the strategy to a lean 15-page plan with clear goals and defined tactics. That campaign achieved more in three months than the initial strategy did in a year.