The further challenge I find is that it takes hard work for a team to assemble a hypothesis everyone get behind. It's much easier (and less effective) to have a single person come up with a hypothesis - but this is what many companies do when they allow the CEO/MD/Chairperson to impose his/her logic.

In other words, they present the strategy to others who nod in agreement, like good soldiers. But oftentimes they are merely agreeing to a list of initiatives or a poor strategy. They all under-estimate the difficulty of the challenge.

For example, a client wanted to enter a new geography which required a significant bilingual skills by a percentage of staff. Long story short, the company abandoned the strategy once it realized that existing staff could not become bilingual fast enough. The best solution would be to relocate the company, which no-one wanted to do. However, they were unanimous in support for the overall strategy, before the numbers were run.

These tradeoffs are difficult to divine until someone / the team digs hard enough into the details i.e. the strategy, not just the initiatives.