The CEO’s Guide to Accelerating Team Execution
When Your Management Team Knows What Needs Doing But Struggles to Get Traction
The Strategic Gap That Costs You Months
You’ve assembled a capable senior team. They understand the market, know your business, and see what needs to happen. Yet somehow, the gap between “knowing” and “doing” keeps widening.
Recent research across 125,000 managers from over 1,000 companies found that the majority couldn’t agree that “Important strategic and operational decisions are quickly translated into action.” These organisations found it difficult to do what they regarded as most important.
This is odd. Why can companies do things that don’t matter very much but can’t do things that do?
The problem is also enduring. Walk into most boardrooms, and the conversations about execution have hardly changed in thirty years. I’m regularly contacted by business leaders who tell me: “The team are great, better than we’ve ever had, but we seem to get bogged down executing what we know needs to happen.”
This is odder still. When we know we have an essential problem that is not new, why can’t we solve it?
If a problem is widespread and enduring, its origins are likely to be deep-seated. The solution must be something fundamental.
The hidden cost: While your team debates approach, competitors move. While you refine strategy, opportunities close. While you align internally, external pressure builds.
Why Smart Teams Get Stuck: The Historical Legacy
The Machine Model Inheritance
Most execution problems stem from industrial-age thinking applied to dynamic modern environments. Indeed, management theory derived from the industrial revolution is often still taught in management schools to this day.
Back then, business owners could simply tell people what to do and dismiss anyone who didn’t comply. Today’s more collaborative work culture means knowledge workers expect to understand the reasoning behind decisions – making Taylor’s ‘just follow orders’ approach both impractical and counterproductive.
However, this cultural shift makes intent-based leadership even more powerful. Today’s educated, skilled workers with positive attitudes aren’t just following orders – when they understand your intent, they can accelerate execution in ways Taylor’s factory workers never could. You’re not just managing compliance, you’re multiplying intelligence and creativity throughout your organisation.
While business schools may not explicitly teach “Taylorism” as a standalone subject, Taylor’s underlying principles are embedded throughout modern curricula, in operations management, organisational design, and performance frameworks. Much of what today’s MBA graduates learn is still based on Taylor’s work, and these principles inevitably shape how they approach execution challenges.
Frederick Taylor’s 1911 “Scientific Management” principles still influence how we plan and execute:
- Assumption: It’s possible to know everything needed to create perfect plans
- Structure: Separate planners from doers
- Belief: There’s “one right way” to execute
This worked for repetitive, predictable tasks in the industrial age but fails in the dynamic fast moving modern era of AI. It fails when knowledge of particular circumstances changes dynamically rendering yesterday’s analysis almost useless and out of date, the situation has changed.
The persistent legacy: Today’s Six Sigma, lean manufacturing, and quality management systems evolved from Taylor’s scientific management and work excellently for their intended purpose – standardised, repeatable processes. The challenge arises when managers apply this same systematic, control-focused thinking to leading teams in dynamic, uncertain environments.
The Dynamic Environment Reality
The old problem has an old solution.
Your team operates in von Moltke’s world, not Taylor’s factory. Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke recognised over 150 years ago that in fast-changing, unpredictable environments, organisations can’t work like well-oiled machines.
The winning advantage: Organisations that behave like organisms can act more effectively with less information than their rivals. An organisation of this type began to be developed more than 100 years before Taylor created the problem.
The fundamental shift: From mechanistic control to intelligent alignment. Von Moltke found that trying to get results by directly taking charge of things at lower levels in the organisational hierarchy is dysfunctional.
The breakthrough insight: The more alignment you have around intent, the more autonomy you can grant. The result is that the organisation’s performance doesn’t depend on being led by exceptional individuals, this solution raises the performance of the average.
Why This Creates Modern Execution Challenges
The Context Problem: Excellent frameworks like Six Sigma work brilliantly for manufacturing consistency, and modern CRMs, analytics platforms, and machine learning provide unprecedented insight into patterns and trends. However, when leaders apply systematic, control-focused thinking to strategic execution in volatile conditions, even the most capable teams can get stuck in analysis loops.
The Digital Amplification Opportunity: Today’s digital tools – CRMs, real-time analytics, machine learning, provide people closest to the action with information that Taylor and von Moltke could never have imagined. When combined with von Moltke’s intent-based approach, this creates extraordinary execution potential. Teams understand the strategic intent AND have access to real-time data, enabling them to make faster, more informed decisions without waiting for central approval.
The Modern Execution Advantage: The challenge isn’t the tools, it’s using control-based thinking when you need adaptive leadership. When people closest to the action understand your intent clearly and have access to current information, they can amplify and multiply your strategic thinking through dynamic decision-making at unprecedented speed.
The Information Advantage Paradox: Modern leaders have access to more real-time data than any generation in history. Yet many teams move slower than ever because they’re applying Taylor’s control-based frameworks to interpret this information. The solution isn’t less data, it’s intent-based leadership that empowers people to act on the information available to them.
The Paradox of Strategic Clarity
The more strategically aware your team becomes, the more options they see. More options create more variables. More variables slow decision-making. More debate, less action.
The Coordination Challenge
Each team member optimises for their function. Sales sees revenue opportunities. Operations sees capacity constraints. Finance sees cash flow implications. Everyone’s right. Nothing moves forward.
The Authority Diffusion Effect
When everyone has strategic input, decision authority becomes unclear. Teams spend more time managing internal consensus than external results.
The Intent-Based Execution Framework
Intent vs. Corporate Vision: A Critical Distinction
Intent-based leadership is fundamentally different from the corporate vision statements that have become meaningless wallpaper in most organisations.
The Vision Statement Problem: Generic phrases like “We strive to be the leading provider of innovative solutions” could apply to any company in any industry. These HR-designed statements sound impressive but provide zero guidance when someone faces a real decision at 3pm on a Tuesday.
Why Intent Works Where Vision Fails:
- Decision-Making Clarity: Intent tells people what to do when you’re not there, “When customers have a problem, they call us first because they know we’ll solve it faster than anyone else”
- Behaviour Guidance: Real people facing real choices can ask “Does this serve our intent?”
- Authenticity: Intent comes from operational reality, not boardroom wordsmithing
- Measurability: You can observe whether intent is being fulfilled – visions are deliberately unmeasurable
The difference: Vision statements are corporate theatre. Intent is operational guidance that actually helps people make better decisions in real situations.
Intent Definition (Beyond “What” to “Why”)
The practical shift: From detailed instructions to clear intent understanding.
How to cascade intent effectively:
- Strategic Level: Define the outcome you want and why it matters to the business
- Operational Level: Explain how success at this level serves the strategic outcome
- Tactical Level: Ensure every team member understands what “good” and “bad” looks like in likely scenarios and situations
- Decision Boundaries: Clarify what decisions they can make autonomously vs. when to escalate
Information Flow Architecture
Modern digital tools provide unprecedented real-time information to people closest to the action. Intent-based leadership maximizes this advantage.
The framework:
- Intent Clarity: Everyone understands the strategic reasoning and success criteria
- Information Access: People closest to the action have the data they need to make informed decisions
- Decision Authority: Clear boundaries on what can be decided locally vs. what needs escalation
- Feedback Loops: Regular intent-focused reviews (not process compliance checks)
Adaptive Execution Systems
Von Moltke’s insight: The more alignment you have around intent, the more autonomy you can grant in execution methods.
Implementation structure:
- Outcome Accountability: Measure results against intent, not adherence to original plans
- Method Flexibility: Teams can adapt approaches as circumstances change, within defined boundaries
- Learning Integration: When execution reveals new information, update understanding rather than forcing compliance with outdated plans
- Escalation Triggers: Clear criteria for when changing circumstances require intent clarification
When Teams Need External Acceleration
Sometimes the most capable teams benefit from an external perspective – not because they lack ability, but because internal dynamics create invisible friction.
Signs your team might benefit from external acceleration:
- You’re having the same strategic conversations repeatedly
- Good ideas aren’t translating into coordinated action
- Team members are frustrated with the pace of decision-making
- You feel like you’re working harder but moving slower
What intent-based acceleration provides:
- Clear operational intent that enables adaptive execution
- Framework for translating strategic thinking into coordinated action
- Alignment that allows autonomy without losing coherence
- Teams that can perform effectively when circumstances change or leadership isn’t present
The Intent-Based Leadership Approach
This isn’t another management fad. It’s based on principles that have been tested in the most demanding environments for over 150 years, evolving from von Moltke’s Auftragstaktik to what modern business leaders like Jack Welch called “planful opportunism.” NATO’s military doctrine is still based on von Moltke’s teachings.
Research validation: Harvard Business Review research analyzing successful companies over ten years identified four primary management practices that correlate with lasting business success. Companies with high scores in all four areas had a better than 90% chance of consistently outperforming competitors – and these align directly with intent-based leadership principles.
Modern validation: Sarina Wiegman’s back-to-back European Championship victories (2022, 2025) demonstrate this approach in action. Her clear strategic intent – “inspire the nation and transform women’s football”, combined with tactical autonomy that allows players to adapt in real-time to changing game conditions.
Crucially, Wiegman transformed how her players understand what representing England means. While the England shirt has traditionally weighed heavy on the men’s team, creating pressure and constraint, she helped her players see it as fuel – pride, purpose, and the opportunity to represent something bigger than themselves. The same external symbol became energizing rather than paralyzing because the intent behind their mission was clearly understood and embraced.
The fundamental principle: Create intelligent organisations through alignment around intent, not control systems through micromanagement.
Your role as CEO: Enable your team to act more effectively with less perfect information, rather than trying to provide perfect information for predetermined actions.
The three core elements of directed opportunism:
- Decide What Really Matters: Focus on clear objectives rather than perfect plans – formulate your strategy as intent, clearly communicated so it’s understood by employees, customers, partners and investors
- Communicate the Intent: Make clear what you want to achieve and why, but leave the “how” to your team, execute flawlessly by empowering front lines to respond to customer needs
- Provide Space and Support: Create fast, flat organisations that eliminate redundant layers while building performance-based cultures that inspire achievement
The goal isn’t to replace your team’s strategic thinking, it’s to multiply their collective effectiveness.
Your team maintains ownership of strategy and decisions. External support accelerates the translation from strategic knowledge to operational results.
Three pathways for intent-based acceleration:
- Intent alignment workshops for immediate mission clarity challenges
- Ongoing intent facilitation for sustained execution improvement
- Strategic intent coaching for leadership effectiveness in volatile conditions
Next Steps: Accelerating Your Team’s Execution
Immediate actions:
- Assess your team’s current execution rhythm
- Identify the primary coordination challenges
- Test one execution accelerator from this guide
For deeper acceleration: Consider whether your team’s strategic capability would benefit from external multiplication – not because they can’t execute, but because your mission deserves maximum collective effectiveness.
