By Kingsley Omonobi

Lagos — In boardrooms across Nigeria, strategy discussions are often elaborate, optimistic and meticulously presented. Yet outcomes frequently fall short of expectations. This long-standing gap between ambition and delivery is the subject of a new book by Nigerian transformation executive Akin Monehin, whose work is generating rigorous debate among business leaders and academics following strong early reception on Amazon in the UK and the US.

Execution Is a Lie interrogates a foundational assumption in corporate Nigeria: that strategy fails because people do not work hard enough or do not “own” the plan. Monehin challenges that view, arguing instead that strategy collapses because organisations underestimate the structural conditions required to translate plans into results.

His thesis has resonated strongly in academic spaces. After the book attracted global attention, Monehin was invited to teach its core frameworks at Lagos Business School, the University of Texas at Dallas, Kellogg School of Management and Chicago Booth School of Business, where he engaged MBA students and executives examining execution under real-world pressure. Participants in both institutions noted that the arguments mirror what they encounter inside complex organisations: misaligned incentives, inconsistent routines, fractured communication channels, and a chronic absence of consequence frameworks.

At the centre of the book is the claim that execution is not an act of willpower but an act of design. Monehin asserts that organisations either create the conditions that make execution possible, through systems, daily signals and accountability structures, or they unknowingly engineer their own failure.

“Most organisations do not lack strategy,” he writes. “They lack the mechanisms that hold strategy together when pressure rises. Execution is not about motivation. It is infrastructure.”

This argument is attracting attention as Nigeria’s private sector grapples with macroeconomic constraints, capital pressure, operational inefficiencies and heightened stakeholder scrutiny. Across industries — from energy to manufacturing to financial services — managers are confronting the same structural question: Why does execution break down so quickly?

In his analysis, Monehin traces execution failures to three fault lines: the absence of a coherent system of work, the ambiguity of signals leaders send in daily interactions, and the weak distribution of “skin in the game” across decision-makers. Using examples drawn from two decades in transformation roles across Shell, NLNG, Virgin Atlantic and British Airways, and across over 10 countries he has worked, he illustrates how seemingly small inconsistencies compound into organisational drift.

Academics who have reviewed the work note that it aligns with a global shift in management thinking, where the emphasis is moving away from strategy as an intellectual exercise and toward strategy as an organisational operating system. This lens, they argue, is particularly relevant for emerging markets where volatility exposes structural weaknesses faster and more brutally.

The momentum surrounding Execution Is a Lie — including its rapid rise across several competitive Amazon categories — suggests that leaders are recognising execution as a distinct discipline requiring its own tools, frameworks and governance model. For many Nigerian executives, the book has opened a conversation that has long been overdue: strategy fails not in the imagination, but in the architecture.

The national debate now forming around Monehin’s work is less about the brilliance of strategy documents and more about the invisible machinery that determines whether those documents produce results. In a business environment where delivery has become a differentiator, the question remains: Will Nigerian organisations build the systems, signals and accountability structures needed to close the execution gap?