Drift happens. Not because leaders lack intelligence. Not because the strategy was wrong. But because execution decays quietly, predictably, under the weight of competing priorities, unclear ownership, and fragmented attention.

Ethiopian Airlines sustained commercial focus through five government transitions to become Africa’s most profitable carrier. Dangote built pan-African cement capacity while competitors collapsed. Rwanda’s tax-to-GDP ratio climbed from 9.5% to 13% of GDP within six years. They didn’t try harder. They designed differently.

Focus is a design choice. Most organisations have designed for drift without realising it. FOCUS5™ is a disciplined system built from what actually works – not theory, but documented practice across organisations that couldn’t afford to let strategy fade. Five moves that protect attention instead of fragmenting it:

FRAME · OWN · CADENCE · UNBLOCK · SUSTAIN

If you’ve wondered why good strategies stall after strong starts, why teams stay busy, but progress slows, why accountability erodes without anyone noticing, or why execution depends on heroic effort that can’t be sustained – this book, Drift Happens, written by Nkululeko Khumalo will show you where the leverage actually sits. Because strategy doesn’t fail all at once. It drifts. And drift is preventable.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nkululeko Khumalo is a strategy execution thinker and operating executive whose work focuses on one persistent organisational risk: strategic drift. Over more than two decades in consulting, investment banking, and senior operations leadership across Africa’s financial sector, he has observed that strategy rarely fails through dramatic collapse. It erodes quietly. Smart teams. Strong plans. Gradual dilution of focus.

He began his career as a mainframe developer, where discipline was binary – systems either worked or they didn’t. That grounding in technical precision shaped his approach to organisational performance: clarity of intent, defined ownership, disciplined cadence.

As a consultant at Accenture, he worked on a multi-country banking transformation spanning eleven African markets, gaining direct insight into how strategy weakens as it scales across borders. In corporate banking, he restored a neglected product line to performance by re-establishing execution discipline. As Chief Operating Officer of Group Legal at Absa Group, he leads an operations team, embedding alignment and execution culture across diverse regulatory environments.

Nkululeko holds an MSc in Strategic Planning from Edinburgh Business School. He speaks on strategy, fintech, and technology leadership internationally and hosts BizLit, a platform exploring business books and strategic ideas.