Harvard Business Review LogoAugust 12, 2026D.Jiang/Getty ImagesMany leadership teams excel at crafting strategy but fail to create the conditions needed to execute it successfully. Before launching a major initiative, leaders should assess theirMost leadership teams I’ve worked with are genuinely good at strategy. They gather market data, debate trade-offs, pressure-test assumptions, and scrutinize financial projections until the picture looks clear. The decision that emerges from that process is usually sound.
Before Rolling Out a New Strategy, Assess Your Team’s Readiness
Many leadership teams excel at crafting strategy but fail to create the conditions needed to execute it successfully. Before launching a major initiative, leaders should assess their organization’s strategic readiness across three dimensions: appetite (whether people genuinely own the outcome), capacity (whether the organization has the focus and bandwidth to sustain the work), and skillset (whether people have the capabilities the work requires). Research in motivation, organizational resilience, and leadership development and examples from Microsoft, Boeing, and enterprise software companies show that execution failures usually stem not from flawed strategy but from overlooked readiness gaps. But it is possible for leaders to built team strength in all three areas before implementation begins to increase a new strategy’s potential for success.
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