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Where Strategy and People Meet
IMPACT ON TEAMS
12/3/20255 min read
Why great execution starts with clarity, not control.
Why great execution starts with clarity, not control.
A strategy is only as strong as the people who can carry it forward.
You can design the most elegant plan, align every metric, and reorganize every team. None of it will matter if clarity dies in translation. The moment clarity stops traveling – through judgment, decisions, and information – strategy turns into just another poster on the wall.
Most leaders blame structure.
Something goes wrong, and the fix is always another re-org or new process. But that’s not the real issue.
Execution fails when people don’t know which decisions are theirs, or don’t have the information to make them well.
A Harvard Business Review study of more than a thousand organizations found that execution success depends twice as much on decision rights and information flow as on structure or incentives. Those two factors – who decides, and what they know – determine whether strategy moves or stalls.
McKinsey’s Organizational Health Index backs this up. Across more than 1,500 companies and now 8 million survey responses, it shows that top-performing organizations are built on clear ownership and open information flow. The healthiest ones, those with strong role clarity and knowledge sharing, outperform peers by nearly three times in long-term shareholder returns.
When those things break, you can feel it. Meetings multiply. Decisions slow down. People stop solving problems and start explaining them. Strategy turns into performance theater.
Why So Many Strategies Fall Apart
Most leaders blame structure.
Something goes wrong, and the fix is always another re-org or new process. But that’s not the real issue.
Execution fails when people don’t know which decisions are theirs, or don’t have the information to make them well.
A Harvard Business Review study of more than a thousand organizations found that execution success depends twice as much on decision rights and information flow as on structure or incentives. Those two factors – who decides, and what they know – determine whether strategy moves or stalls.
McKinsey’s Organizational Health Index backs this up. Across more than 1,500 companies and now 8 million survey responses, it shows that top-performing organizations are built on clear ownership and open information flow. The healthiest ones, those with strong role clarity and knowledge sharing, outperform peers by nearly three times in long-term shareholder returns.
When those things break, you can feel it. Meetings multiply. Decisions slow down. People stop solving problems and start explaining them. Strategy turns into performance theater.
Why So Many Strategies Fall Apart
What Capability Really Means
Clarity, about your strategy and where you're heading, doesn’t live in PowerPoint decks. It lives in decisions.
And so, capability isn’t about having more people or better tools. It’s about building teams with high clarity that can interpret intent, not just execute tasks. The real measure of alignment is what happens when plans change; when someone faces an unexpected situation and knows how to act without asking.
That moment reveals whether clarity has traveled far enough.
In high-capability organizations, clarity becomes muscle memory. People understand not only what to do, but why it matters. Decisions are made closer to the problem. Context flows freely upward and sideways, not just down. Leaders stop being translators and start being mentors.
Good strategy gives direction.
Great capability, a byproduct of clarity, keeps that direction intact when conditions shift.
When decision rights and information flow align, work becomes smoother.
Clarity starts feeding on itself. Teams learn faster. Mistakes get caught earlier.
Over time, that builds a culture where people feel trusted to act and are responsible for the outcomes. The business stays steady even when things get messy.
That’s what real capability looks like. It’s not more structure. It’s confidence built through shared understanding.
When Clarity Becomes Culture
Reality Check: How This Looks Inside Companies
Netflix expects managers to practice “context, not control.” It is pushing decision-making to the edges while saturating teams with information, allowing them to exercise judgment without waiting for permission. It’s capability by design: fewer escalations, more informed calls, faster learning.
Amazon’s “two-pizza teams” operationalize decision rights and accountability at a small-team scale. Tiny, single-threaded groups own a customer problem end-to-end, which clarifies who makes the decision, reduces coordination drag, and speeds up informed action.
GitLab runs on an operating model that emphasizes a shared reality, equal contributions, and decision velocity. They have achieved top-decile OHI performance against McKinsey benchmarks, tying culture, clarity, and outcomes in a measurable way.
Southwest Airlines equips frontline teams with the customer context needed to resolve issues on the spot, improving both speed and satisfaction. When information moves, capability shows up where it’s needed most.
Different companies, same pattern: when people know what’s theirs to decide, and have the info to do it, strategy actually sticks.
Why It Matters
Strategy tells you where to go.
Growth moves you there.
Capability, the ability of your people to carry the clarity, keeps the meaning intact so that you can do it again and again.
Because in the end, success doesn’t come from the brilliance of a single plan. It comes from teams that can keep the work going long after the presentation ends.
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