“We’re doing OK. But it feels like we’re slower than I hoped. Everything feels heavier.”
These were the words one of my CEO clients shared during our 1-on-1 conversation. The company is solid. They have a strong leadership team, a clearly defined strategy, low turnover, and a talented group of people. They are a $60M business with healthy margins, and they’ve been growing steadily. The strategy is intended to accelerate that growth.
On the surface, everything looks healthy. Progress is being made, but not at the necessary pace to reach the next stage.
“What’s missing?” he asked.
I don’t think he expected my answer.
“Strategies are not executed by plans…they’re executed by people.”
“You’ve done all the right things to develop an effective strategy. You’ve analyzed the market, defined your priorities, built and socialized the plan, created alignment and buy-in, and set KPIs and responsibilities.”
“But you haven’t prepared your organization to execute it.”
This is a common failing, and one of the primary reasons executions fail.
We forget that, over time, people have optimized their behaviors to succeed within the current environment. Their existing relationships, interactions, habits, and decision patterns are what allow them to perform day in and day out. That is what drives how they respond to challenges.
A new strategy, however, is asking them to do a different job. It requires different decision criteria, new ways of interacting, and often new skills.
But have they actually signed up for that new job?
Have they consciously chosen to take on what it will require to succeed?
Most likely, they still believe they have the same job they had before. And so they continue to behave the same way, applying an old mindset to new challenges.
This is why it is often say that culture eats strategy for breakfast.
I once had a client make this point very clearly to his team. He said, “I have good news and bad news. The bad news is we are closing the company, and all of your jobs are gone. The good news is I’ve just created a new company, and there are many opportunities for those who want to take on the new roles.”
Extreme, perhaps, but it makes the point.
When you create a new strategic direction, you are, in many ways, creating a new company.
Developing the strategy is not the end of the journey, with the expectation of execution to naturally follow. It’s the beginning of the most important journey, evolving and developing the people to increase the collective capacity of the collective to execute.
As organizations grow, the level of results required of them increases.
What worked at $10M doesn’t work at $50M.
What worked at $50M doesn’t work at $100M.
Just as a person must develop new skills as they grow, so too must an organization. Greater coordination is required, along with deeper levels of interdependence and increased complexity in decision-making.
More importantly, people must begin to think beyond their role and act for the good of the whole.
Organizations must develop their collective capability and maturity to achieve the next level of results.
This is not a system or process issue. It is a behavior issue and, ultimately, a development issue.
Once the strategy is defined, the next step is to ask:
“What behaviors is the organization currently optimized for, and what new behaviors are required to execute this strategy?”
At that point, the focus shifts from simply tracking performance to using performance as a way to evolve and develop new behaviors.
That shift changes everything.
First, we anchor the results that truly matter for the next stage of growth, not just as targets, but in terms of what those results require from the organization.
Then we honestly assess the organization’s current capacity to produce those results. We identify existing behavior patterns and determine what new behaviors must be developed.
What capability is sufficient, and what is lacking?
What relationship patterns need to change?
Where is maturity lagging, and how do we develop it?
Understanding that capacity to execute is the combination of capability and maturity — expressed through behavior patterns that naturally produce outcomes — we then revisit processes and systems and reshape them to support those behaviors.
Processes and systems do not create new behaviors. But they do support them or hinder them.
When things feel slow, heavy, or harder than they should, the instinct is to push harder or install something new.
But when the organization is being asked to produce results it is not yet developed to deliver, no system can compensate for that gap.
Working with this CEO, over time, he began to notice concrete changes.
Decisions moved faster. Issues were resolved where they occurred. Collaboration increased. People began to make trade-offs in their own KPIs for the success of the whole. And most importantly, they were hitting their numbers.
He later told me, “Since we shifted our focus, my life has become easier, and more fun. I’m watching the team take ownership instead of depending on me. I can finally focus on the future instead of why things aren’t moving forward.”
The next time things feel slower than they should, or you find yourself pulled back into the weeds, don’t start by asking what system or process is missing.
Ask instead:
“What behaviors must we evolve and develop to ensure our organization is capable of producing the results our future requires?”
That is where the real work begins.