When to Step In, and When to Stay Out
Part 2 in the “From the Touchline” series
The hardest part of leading from the touchline isn’t keeping out of the detail. It’s knowing when and how not to get drawn into the detail when your strategic intent clarity could multiply team effectiveness rather than replace their judgement.
Strategic leaders often operate in the grey zone between involvement and oversight. You’re not in the engine room, but you can see the steam rising. The temptation to intervene is strong, especially when pace drops, performance stutters, or execution veers from the strategic intent.
But the real edge isn’t in reacting. It’s in reading the moment with clarity and understanding when intervention multiplies capability versus when it creates dependency.
The costliest mistake a Chair or Portfolio Manager can make? Stepping in too late. The second costliest? Stepping in too soon.
The false comfort of involvement
There’s a sense of safety in involvement. When things feel uncertain, activity feels like progress. There’s board pressure, reputational risk, and the very human desire to feel useful. The phrase “just to be helpful” has covered all manner of unnecessary interventions.
But involvement isn’t neutral. It shifts the power dynamic. It creates dependency. And it often makes the team’s thinking smaller just when it needs to expand.
The best leaders I’ve worked with understand that the urge to act isn’t always a signal to act. Sometimes it’s just discomfort disguised as strategic necessity.
When you shouldn’t step in
There are moments where holding your ground, staying quiet, staying back, is the strongest multiplication move you can make.
You shouldn’t step in when the team is aligned on strategic intent, even if they’re not executing it your way. When you’re reacting to personal discomfort rather than a material drift from operational intent. When the situation is noisy, but not truly off-track from the agreed outcomes. When your presence would dilute accountability rather than sharpen strategic focus.
If the mission is clear, the team understands what success looks like, and you’re struggling more with their methods than their direction, the real discipline is staying out of the way and letting The Strategic Multiplication Framework™ work.
When you must step in
But there are also moments where touchline leadership becomes active intervention. When strategic restraint becomes a risk to the organisation’s ability to execute intent.
You must step in when there’s clear drift from strategic intent and no one’s calling it. When the business is confusing activity with progress toward agreed outcomes. When there’s silent misalignment within the team, masked by surface agreement but undermining execution effectiveness. When pace has collapsed and nobody is resetting the rhythm of decision-making. When there’s reputational or systemic risk the team can’t see from their operational vantage point.
During my early days as an NED, I found this particularly challenging. Coming from a strong operational background, when you’re used to being responsible for delivery, it can feel unnatural, even negligent, to hold back. But I’ve learned that good judgement from the touchline is about knowing when your involvement multiplies their capability and when it might quietly derail their confidence.
This is where strategic leaders earn their place. Not by managing tasks, but by seeing what others can’t, and acting at the moment that multiplies rather than diminishes team effectiveness.
Why strategic intent clarity comes first
One of the biggest blockers I see in boardrooms is vague or over-engineered strategic intent. The kind of mission statement that tries to say everything, and ends up meaning nothing to the people who need to execute it. Often, the real issue isn’t misalignment of effort. It’s confusion over what the business is actually trying to achieve.
Most boards can write a far clearer version of the company’s true strategic intent in about an hour. When that happens, decision-making sharpens almost immediately. When I’m working with a board or leadership team, I use a simple one-page strategic intent framework. It includes just three elements: the mission, the key objectives, and the critical results. Nothing more.
When these are written clearly and agreed upon, it becomes much easier to know when to support, when to challenge, and when to let the team execute. Once the strategic intent is clear, I build the board reporting structure around it. The executive team knows they’ll be reporting against it, so naturally, they focus on achieving the key results.
If the team starts focusing elsewhere, it’s usually a sign that either the strategic intent needs updating or they’re not aligned with it. If the business needs to stabilise for twelve months to ride out a storm, say that clearly. It’s far more powerful than vague statements about ‘delivering excellence’ or ‘delighting customers at scale.’
What von Moltke understood about intent
The real role of touchline leadership isn’t to dictate action. It’s to ensure clarity of strategic intent that enables teams to make the right decisions under pressure.
Helmuth von Moltke, the Prussian General, recognised that in high-stakes, fast-changing environments, detailed instructions would collapse the moment reality changed. His solution wasn’t to tighten control. It was to increase clarity of operational intent.
He focused on ensuring his officers understood what mattered, why it mattered, and then trusted them to adapt the “how” as conditions changed. But he also expected leaders to know when to step in. Not reactively. Deliberately. When the moment truly called for strategic intervention.
Von Moltke’s philosophy of decentralised initiative within clear strategic intent was so successful that it remains the cornerstone of NATO doctrine today. This balance—standing back until it’s time to provide strategic clarity—is the heartbeat of multiplication leadership.
A simple discipline
Before you intervene, ask yourself: Is this a moment or a pattern? Will stepping in clarify strategic intent or confuse execution? Am I multiplying the team’s capability or replacing their judgement?
These questions need to be anchored in something concrete. That’s why I build board reporting and leadership focus around clear strategic intent. If your instinct says something feels off, start by looking at the mission, objectives, and key results. Is the team still tracking against what was agreed? If they are, maybe it’s your discomfort that needs examining. If they aren’t, it’s probably time to step in and reset strategic direction.
This doesn’t require a complex framework. It requires clarity, discipline, and honesty with yourself and the team.
If you’re still unsure, ask a few clarifying questions: What exactly are we trying to achieve in this next phase? Does everyone see the same picture of success? What are we not saying that we should be? If we had to write our strategic intent in one line today, what would it be?
These questions often unlock clarity without disrupting momentum.
Learning from my own mistakes
I’ve stepped in too early before. I’ve overridden judgement when I should’ve built confidence. I’ve made things faster in the short term, but less stable strategically.
And I’ve held back too long, trying to respect the team’s autonomy when, deep down, I knew the strategic intent had become unclear. In both cases, I learned that timing isn’t about instinct. It’s about awareness, clarity of intent, and the discipline to act on behalf of the mission’s success, not your own need for control.
The multiplication happens when you resist the urge to solve problems personally and instead create the conditions where teams can solve problems faster and more effectively.
The real art of multiplication leadership
Touchline leadership through The Strategic Multiplication Framework™ is measured not in how often you speak, but in the multiplication effect you have when you do.
If you’re guiding a business as Chair or NED, managing portfolio performance, or leading as CEO or Managing Director, this judgement is your competitive edge. The ability to know when strategic intervention multiplies capability and when strategic restraint lets that capability flourish.
And it gets sharper with practice.
The Strategic Multiplication Framework™ forms part of my strategic operations consulting approach. Working as Chair/NED, Interim CEO, or Executive Coach, I help senior management teams multiply their strategic knowledge and operational effectiveness.
Follow the complete “From The Touchline” series for frameworks that translate strategic intent into multiplied operational results.
