For most of my career, I have been focused on delivery. As a Senior Director at ADP, I lead large-scale business teams focused on delivering exceptional client outcomes through end-to-end service excellence, while driving customer retention and business growth. But over a 25-year career, I have also learned that delivering results is only one part of sustainable success.

As leaders become more senior, the questions we deal with start to change. It is no longer only about how to execute effectively. Increasingly, it is about deciding where to focus, which problems are worth solving, what capabilities we need to build and how we align the organisation around those priorities.

That shift has made strategy an increasingly important part of my own leadership journey.

When Execution Starts with the Right Choices

Today, my role involves contributing to discussions around organisational capability building, talent development, business priorities and transformation initiatives. Strategy is no longer something I see as a separate exercise that happens away from the day-to-day business. It is embedded in everyday decision-making.

After spending many years building my career around delivery and execution, I reached a point where I wanted to deepen my understanding of what sits upstream of execution. As leaders grow, we spend less time solving problems ourselves and more time deciding which problems are worth solving. I wanted a more structured way to think about strategy, particularly around making choices, allocating time and resources and ensuring organisational alignment.

There was also a very practical reason for choosing the Strategy Formulation and Execution Programme at ISB. I valued the opportunity to step away from back-to-back meetings and spend three focused days thinking deeply about something that can easily get crowded out by operational demands.

For me, it was not about moving away from execution. It was about understanding how better strategic choices can make execution more effective.

The Gap Between Good Plans and Real Outcomes

I would not point to one dramatic event that led me to the programme. It was more of a pattern that became visible over time. Like most leaders, I have seen initiatives where talented teams worked incredibly hard, milestones were achieved and yet the business impact fell short of expectations. Initially, it is tempting to look at execution for answers. But over time, I realised that many of these challenges actually originated much earlier.

Sometimes priorities were not fully aligned. Sometimes resources were spread too thin. Sometimes the organisation was pursuing too many good ideas simultaneously. That made me more curious about the discipline of strategy itself. A strategy can look very compelling on paper, but its success ultimately depends on the choices behind it. What are we prioritising? What are we willing to give up? Where should we allocate resources? And are we creating the organisational conditions required to execute effectively?

Those are the questions I wanted to explore more deeply.

Why I Chose ISB

What attracted me to ISB Executive Education's Strategy Formulation and Execution Programme was the emphasis on both formulation and execution. Many conversations around strategy tend to focus on creating the plan. My experience has been that the real challenge often comes afterwards. Great ideas are abundant. Turning them into sustained results is where leadership gets tested. The programme seemed designed around that reality. The combination of a focused curriculum, experienced faculty and a cohort of senior leaders made it particularly relevant to me. I was not looking for theory alone. I wanted frameworks and perspectives that I could take back and apply to real business situations.

That practical orientation was important. A good Strategy Course should do more than introduce concepts. It should challenge the way you think about the decisions you are already making. The three-day format also worked for me because it created an opportunity to step away from the business without losing sight of it. In fact, stepping away helped me look at some of the challenges I was dealing with from a different perspective.

Strategy is About Choices

One idea from the programme that stayed with me is that strategy is really about choices. As leaders, we are often encouraged to look for opportunities. What I was reminded of is that strategy is just as much about deciding what not to do. That challenged my natural instinct as an execution-focused leader. When you are used to solving problems and moving things forward, the temptation can be to jump straight into action. The programme reinforced the importance of stepping back first and asking whether we are solving the right problem.

Another takeaway that resonated strongly with me was that strategy is fundamentally about answering two questions: Where to Play and How to Win. These questions sound simple, but they force a level of clarity that is easy to lose when an organisation is dealing with multiple priorities at the same time. For me, that is where meaningful Strategy Training can add value. It gives leaders a framework to pause, question assumptions and make choices more deliberately rather than simply responding to everything that comes their way.

Bringing Strategy Closer to Execution

I have become more deliberate about connecting initiatives to strategic outcomes. In planning discussions, I now spend more time asking questions such as: What are we trying to achieve? What capabilities do we need? What are we willing to deprioritise?

These questions help create greater focus and alignment within teams. The change is not necessarily about introducing an entirely new way of working. It is about becoming more intentional about the connection between priorities and execution. That distinction matters. When teams understand not only what they are expected to deliver but also why it matters and how it connects to the larger business objective, execution becomes more focused. This is also why I see strategy formulation and execution as closely connected disciplines rather than two separate stages of a process.

Learning Beyond My Own Context

The diversity of the cohort was one of the highlights of my ISB experience. When you have been in a leadership role for a long time, it is easy to spend most of your time engaging with people who face similar challenges. At ISB, I interacted with leaders from different industries, business models and functional backgrounds. What struck me was that while our contexts were different, many of the underlying leadership challenges were remarkably similar.

The conversations made it clear that questions around prioritisation, organisational alignment, resources and execution are not limited to any one industry. Prof Deepak Jena brought strong academic rigour to the sessions, but what made them particularly engaging was how quickly the discussions connected back to real-world situations that all of us could relate to. That combination of academic thinking and practical discussion was one of the strongest aspects of the programme for me.

From Executing Strategy to Shaping Direction

I think the programme helped me put words to a transition that was already happening in my career. I have always seen myself as someone who enjoys building high-performing teams to deliver outstanding results. That is still true. But the programme helped me appreciate that leadership is not only about delivering outcomes. It is also about helping shape the direction that creates those outcomes. That has changed the way I think about my own role. Execution remains a core strength, but it becomes even more valuable when it is connected to a clear strategic direction. At the same time, a strategy without the ability to execute remains just an idea.

Strategy and execution are not competing strengths. The best leaders understand both. For me, that has been an important perspective shift. I do not see strategic thinking as something separate from execution. I see it as the discipline that helps determine where execution should be directed.

Strategy in a Faster-moving Business Environment

The pace of change today is forcing organisations to rethink how they approach strategy. Five-year plans still have a place, but the ability to adapt, learn and respond quickly matters even more. Whether it is AI, changing customer expectations or evolving workforce dynamics, leaders are operating in a much more dynamic environment than before. This does not make strategy less important. If anything, it makes strategic clarity more important.

I believe the future belongs to organisations that can combine strategic clarity with execution agility. You need enough clarity to know where you are going, but also enough flexibility to respond when the environment changes. The programme gave me useful frameworks and perspectives to navigate that balance more effectively. It reinforced for me that strategy cannot be treated as a static document. It needs to inform decisions while leaving room for organisations to learn and adapt.

Making Space to Think

For senior leaders who have built their careers on execution and are wondering whether three days away from a packed calendar is worth it, I would say that some of the most valuable leadership development happens when you deliberately create space to think. When you spend most of your time operating, it is easy to keep moving from one decision to the next without taking enough time to examine the assumptions behind those decisions.

That is where a focused programme can be useful. A Strategy Certificate can provide structure to that learning, but I would look beyond the credential itself. The real value lies in the frameworks, conversations and perspectives you take back into your organisation. The same applies to Online Strategy Training. For leaders balancing demanding roles, the format can offer flexibility, but the learning still needs to be practical and relevant to the challenges they face.

An Online Strategy Program can provide another route for experienced professionals to develop this capability, while a Strategy Certification can formally mark the completion of that learning journey. Ultimately, though, the credential is not what matters most to me. The more important outcome is whether the experience changes the way you approach decisions.

For me, the ISB experience reinforced something that becomes increasingly important as you move into senior leadership. The higher you move, the less your role is about simply getting things done and the more it becomes about deciding what deserves to get done in the first place. That is the discipline I wanted to strengthen. And ultimately, that is what strategy means to me. Not simply having a plan, but making the choices that give execution a clear direction.

Synopsis

After nearly two decades in senior delivery and leadership roles at ADP, Arun Tuli reflects on his shift from being focused primarily on execution to thinking more deliberately about strategic direction. Through the Strategy Formulation and Execution Programme, he explores strategic choices, resource allocation, organisational alignment and the discipline required to turn strategy into sustained results.