Does your team have what it takes to execute your strategy?

Strategic execution requires more than just a smart team.

THINK ON IT: Does your team have what it takes to execute your strategy? 

Don’t answer that question too quickly.

Good execution is more than having a clearly defined future state and rallying a team around it. Sure, we’d all love to “hire the best people and get out of their way,” but there’s more to ensuring a successful execution than hiring highly capable people.

Of course, capability is important. But, in my experience, it often becomes the singular lens by which we evaluate our ability to execute. We look at the skills our teams possess and make a judgment call (often subconsciously) about whether we can trust them to do their part. And when we can’t, we either try to “develop them” or find an alternative path to getting the job done.

Yet, if we stop there, we will have missed two other important dimensions we need to cultivate in our teams: capacity and chemistry.

Capacity is about self-governance. How dependable is the team to self-manage and dedicate the time and energy to the objective? Are they able to sufficiently prioritize the effort needed to meet the objective and its demands? Or, are they consumed by reactive fire-fighting?

Without a team with strong self-governing capacity, your strategy is just a pipe-dream.

Likewise, your team’s chemistry can be life or death to your strategy. 

The chemistry I’m talking about here, is not team alignment per se. Rather it’s about the alignment of the individual to the strategy itself. It’s recognizing that the fulfillment of every strategy involves successfully managing a polarity between the desires of the organization (the strategy) and the internal aspirations of every member of the team–those activities and pursuits that personally energize them. 

Strategic leaders recognize this duality and seek to find ways to cultivate the chemistry between the company’s future vision and those of each of the members of their team.

So, now answer the question: Does your team have what it takes to execute your strategy?

If not, what would it take to increase your confidence level that a team member is growing in their capability, capacity, or chemistry?

Premium Members, read on to learn how to increase your confidence that your team has what it takes to execute your strategy. (Become a Premium Member. Paid subscribers get access to nearly 100 tools and how-tos on implementing strategic topics, including a 7-part series to help leaders build their own strategic capacity.)

“Remember that most people will pretend to operate in your interest while operating in their own.” — Ray Dalio

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