Are You Setup for Success?
Why many FMCG growth strategies fail and how to ensure yours delivers
In today’s FMCG environment, most organisations are not short of ambition. Growth strategies are clearly defined, priorities are set, and expectations from boards, investors and customers continue to rise.
Yet a more fundamental question often goes unchallenged:
Are you truly set up to deliver your plan or simply relying on your current model to hold under increasing pressure?
This is where many strategies begin to fall short.
Recent research from McKinsey & Company highlights the scale of the challenge. Only 21% of executives believe their strategies are genuinely high quality, and 42% report struggling to achieve the impact those strategies were designed to deliver. This suggests the issue is not just execution. In many cases, strategies themselves are not sufficiently robust, aligned or actionable from the outset.
For senior FMCG leaders, this reflects a broader shift. Defining a strategy is no longer the differentiator. The real advantage lies in how effectively an organisation is set up to execute it.
The execution gap is widening
The FMCG landscape has become significantly more complex over the past decade. Customers are more sophisticated, channels are more fragmented, and the pace of innovation continues to accelerate. At the same time, margin pressure remains constant, forcing organisations to deliver more with greater precision.
In this environment, even well-considered strategies can underperform. The root cause is often a lack of alignment between strategy, capability and organisational design. These elements are frequently developed in isolation, resulting in plans that look strong on paper but are difficult to execute in practice.
This misalignment does not always appear immediately. It tends to surface over time through inconsistent performance, slower decision making and varying levels of effectiveness across teams, customers or regions.
Capability is now a critical constraint
Capability has become one of the most important and most overlooked drivers of performance. According to McKinsey & Company, 78% of leaders see capability building as critical to long-term growth. Yet 60% of organisations report significant skills gaps. This disconnect is at the heart of many execution challenges.
Commercial teams are being asked to operate at a higher level than ever before. Customer conversations require greater insight, planning needs to be more rigorous and negotiations are increasingly complex. However, the development of these capabilities has not always kept pace with changing demands.
As a result, organisations often experience inconsistency in how strategy is translated into action. Some teams perform strongly, while others struggle to apply the same level of thinking or structure. Over time, this erodes both confidence and performance.
Why strategies are not measuring up
It is easy to attribute underperformance to poor execution alone. In reality, many strategies are not set up for success from the beginning.
Common issues include over optimistic assumptions, insufficient prioritisation and a lack of clarity around what needs to happen at a customer or channel level. Plans can remain too high level, with limited connection to day-to-day decision making.
This is reflected in recent data showing that fewer than 15% of strategic initiatives are consistently delivered. The implication is clear: having a strategy is not enough. It must be specific, grounded and fully aligned to how the organisation operates.
Without this, teams are left to interpret the plan in different ways, leading to fragmentation and inefficiency.
What high-performing organisations do differently
The organisations that consistently outperform are not necessarily those with more ambitious strategies. They are those that ensure alignment between what they want to achieve and how they are set up to achieve it.
They bring greater rigour to strategy development, challenging assumptions and making clear choices about where to focus. They invest deliberately in capability, equipping their teams with practical tools and frameworks that can be applied in real situations. Just as importantly, they ensure their organisational design reflects their growth priorities, with clear roles, responsibilities and decision-making processes.
This alignment creates a level of clarity and confidence that is difficult to replicate. Teams understand what is expected, how to deliver it and where to focus their efforts.
The role of external perspective
One of the biggest barriers to achieving this alignment is proximity. Internal teams are often too close to the business to objectively assess whether the strategy is robust, where capability gaps exist, or how effectively the organisation is structured to deliver.
An external perspective can provide the challenge and objectivity needed to address these questions. It brings broader experience, proven frameworks and a more rigorous approach to diagnosing issues and identifying opportunities.
At Sellex, the focus is on ensuring that growth plans are not only well defined, but fully deliverable. This involves strengthening the quality of strategy, building the capabilities required to execute it and aligning organisational structures with where growth is coming from.
The outcome is not simply a better plan, but a more confident and capable organisation.
We are here to support your organisation.
Contact Sellex today to find out how we can help.
