When a small team creates a strategy, a so-called low-atitude strategies, they almost always spend a great deal of time refining their strategy. This isn’t because most teams believe in refinement. Rather it’s because most teams lack the authority to force others to align with their strategy. This lack of authority means they must incrementally prove out their approach until other teams or executives believe it’s worth aligning with.

High-altitude strategy is typically the domain of executives, who generally have the ability to mandate adoption, and routinely skip the refinement stage, even when it’s inexpensive and is almost guaranteed to make them more successful. Why is that? When executives start a new role, they know making an early impression matters.