The Growth Lab Team
I spent years running strategy days with agency leadership teams. Two days, good venue, everyone in the room. We'd leave with a plan everyone had agreed to and a long list of things that were going to change.
Six months later I'd come back and most of it hadn't happened. The founders were frustrated. The team felt guilty. We'd spend the first hour relitigating decisions that had supposedly been made.
The problem wasn't the plan. The problem was that everyone had agreed to execute someone else's plan. When things got difficult — and they always do — there was no internal momentum. The strategy belonged to me and the CEO. Everyone else was a recipient.
The thing that changed it was building a small internal team — usually five or six people — who researched the problems, designed the solutions, and ran the pilots themselves. Not the most senior people. The ones who'd be leading the business in three to five years. The future leaders who were currently a layer below the top.
The execution rate was completely different. When people build something they tend to be willing to do what it takes to make it work. When they're handed someone else's work and asked to implement it, they do what they're told. Which is not the same thing.