<p>Public governance has become increasingly saturated with plans, targets, indicators, delivery units, and performance routines, yet persistent policy underperformance continues to be diagnosed mainly as an implementation problem. This comment argues that part of that pattern reflects not just empirical difficulty, but an analytical habit built into how the policy cycle is commonly used. While the cycle remains valuable as a heuristic, it under-specifies a distinction between two different but interdependent governing processes: the political authorization of collective purpose and the administrative-operational organization of delivery. When that distinction is blurred, unresolved ambiguity in strategy is absorbed into plans, targets, and performance frameworks, which are then treated as if they expressed already-settled commitments. Tensions originating upstream are thus displaced downstream and recoded as problems of coordination, implementation, and managerial weakness. The result is a recurring misdiagnosis: what appears as delivery failure may begin in weakly stabilized political direction. Distinguishing between purpose design and purpose delivery helps clarify why accountability so often settles on delivery systems, why performance regimes may optimize action without reopening purpose, and why tools such as PDCA are more appropriate for delivery than for the political authorization of direction. The policy cycle need not be abandoned, but used with greater analytical precision.</p>