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As example content, we shall add some modified quotes.

In order to execute a strategy one needs

1. A plan based on accurate information
2. An organisation that can execute the plan
3. A reliable method to measure progress on the plan
4. A willingness to modify the plan and the organisation as new information comes to light

The key element is information. Without relevant, accurate information it is unlikely the plan will be any good, the organisation can make it work, or progress (or the lack thereof) can be understood. Information may derive from two sources. A model or data. Models are good when they are accurate. They seldom are. Data is good, but it has weaknesses as well:

1. The data you're looking at is irrelevant
2. The data you're looking at is highly likely to be inaccurate

Regarding the inaccuracies of data, Robert Strange McNamara has some choice quotes in his book In Retrospect:

From the beginning of our involvement in Vietnam, the South Vietnamese forces had been giving us poor intelligence and inaccurate reports. Sometimes these inaccuracies were conscious attempts to mislead; at other times they were the product of too much optimism. And sometimes the inaccuracies merely reflected the difficulty of gauging progress accurately.

In this book McNamara remains curiously blind to some failures, the most glaring of which is the lack of not only the ability but even the effort to measure the most relevant information to the war in Vietnam: the willingness of the Vietnamese to fight against the dictatorship and its sponsors. Although McNamara can be considered a very candid public official, as especially shown in The Fog of War, one quickly assumes this oversight stems from the lack of democratic support for the South Vietnamese dictators, that would thus be put into numerical perspective. Whether this assumption is correct, is of course similarly difficult to gauge.