#416 – November 17, 2025

Mindsets & Methods for Executing Strategy

Hello, fellow strategists!  In this edition, we focus on the forces that make strategy actually happen — from the psychology that can stall even the best intentions, to the middle managers who act as your organization’s nervous system, to the personal traits and habits that separate dreamers from doers. We also draw surprising lessons from chefs, whose flow, focus, and teamwork offer insights for getting things done in any high-stakes environment. Enjoy!

 

Quick Takes

When Psychology Stalls Strategy Execution

Even the best strategies falter if people struggle to act. Clearer Thinking highlights three predictable psychological barriers —despair, denial, and defiance— that stop teams from turning intentions into action.

• Despair shows up when problems feel too big and individual impact feels too small. People assume their actions don’t matter, and worse, assume others won’t act either, creating a self-fulfilling loop of inaction. Leaders can counter it by making impact visible, breaking work into winnable pieces, and shifting attention from broader overwhelm to local, meaningful progress.
• Denial emerges when actions and values clash. The discomfort of cognitive dissonance leads people to rationalize, minimize, or avoid inconvenient truths. Instead of pushing harder, leaders can lower the barrier to first steps, making it easier for staff to take small, value-aligned actions rather than defend the status quo.
• Defiance kicks in when people feel pushed, judged, or backed into a corner, triggering reactance and entrenching existing behaviours. Leaders reduce defiance by respecting autonomy, inviting curiosity, and offering multiple pathways to contribute.

For strategists, recognizing despair, denial and defiance isn’t abstract psychology — it’s practical anticipation for turning intent into action.

 

Middle Managers: The Blind Spot We Can’t Ignore

New research from Jan U. Hagen and Bin Zhao (HBR) highlights an overlooked truth: the people most responsible for translating strategy into real-world results—middle managers—feel the least psychologically safe at work.

In a global study of more than 1,100 managers, middle managers scored significantly lower than both their senior leaders and their own teams. The gap is even sharper for newly promoted managers.

Middle managers are your “nervous system,” signalling risks and coordinating countless adjustments. When they don’t feel safe to speak up, bad news gets softened, weak signals never surface, and innovation slows because nobody wants to risk visible failure. In short: strategy execution stalls.

The research points to five causes:  fear of reputational damage, a lack of senior role-modeling, unrealistic expectations of perfection, structural isolation, and the shock of stepping into the middle too quickly.

For strategic leadership, the fix is cultural, not cosmetic:
• Encourage smart risk-taking through fair, learning-oriented accountability.
• Model fallibility — share your own missteps openly.
• Talk about near-misses to normalize learning.
• Build real communities of practice for middle managers.
• Treat promotion into the middle as a transition, not an instant identity shift.

If the middle can’t speak up, strategy can’t move. Strengthening this layer is one of the highest-leverage investments leaders can make.

 

Execution Factors for Strategic Success

At a workshop for United Way agencies this month, we shared tips on how to translate strategy into impact. Many were interested in a slide we had on The Four Disciplines of Execution which are Focus, Points of Leverage, your Scoreboard, and having a Cadence of Accountability.

While the Four Disciplines of Execution provides one practical framework,  entrepreneur Kim Perell offers a complementary perspective on the traits that drive execution. As she explains in her book The Execution Factor: The One Skill that Drives Success, the ability to execute can be the difference between success and failure.

To transform yourself from a “dreamer” to a “doer”, she teaches 5 traits of execution: Vision, Passion, Action, Resilience, and Relationships. And here are some perhaps counter-intuitive observations to consider:

• Vision as Direction: The vision is a compass, not a final map. Its purpose is directional alignment, allowing the specific path to change without compromising the core purpose. (Strong clarity and decision-making are also pivotal.)
• Having Passion: Passion isn’t only about perseverance; it’s also what makes the hard, “unsexy” work worth doing and worthwhile.
• Taking Action: Your first action is less about success than learning what works. Small actions create the necessary feedback loop for steering strategy. Then prioritize and focus.
• Building Resilience: True resilience is built during times of success by anticipating and planning for the inevitable failures.
• Pruning Relationships: Success often requires refocusing relationships strategically, letting go of those that are negative, distracting and time demanding.

 

8020Info Drill-Down

Effective Action: Learning from Chefs’ Practices

There are many important lessons to be learned from chefs directing the fast-paced action in high-end kitchens. Here are three sources to help you learn more about them.

Manage the Flow:

We often refer to Six Practices for Working Clean. ((The tips build on ideas from the book Everything in Its Place by Dan Charnas.) Three of them that clients typically find most helpful are:

• Sequence: We can never do more than one thing at a time. Sort out what comes first, what comes next, and what comes after that. A minute spent at the right moment could save you hours later.
• Immersive vs. Process Time: Immersive tasks require your full focus and involvement. Process tasks can be completed without a chef’s direct attention. Once started, the rice cooks on its own, but getting it started at the right time is critical.
• Arrangement: A chef arranges a workspace to reflect the movement of food, and every tool is kept in its place. Arrange your physical and virtual workspaces to provide order, predictability and smooth workflow.

Sharpen your Methods:

As chef Paul Sorgule notes when explaining his kitchen laws, every profession has its respective “method of operation”. Here are some he mentions that should perhaps be applied to your own approach for effective action:

• Work Clean – Always! “Smart cooks, even on the busiest of shifts, always, always, always keep their station clean and organized. To fail to do this will result in system breakdown.”
• Never Sacrifice Quality for Speed, or Speed for Quality: Be Prepared for Both. “Of course, there are short cuts that every cook learns, but if those short cuts compromise the quality of a dish, then a cook compromises the reputation of the restaurant, the chef, and the crew and impacts the experience of the guest.”
• Always Take Care of the Dishwashers. “The chef doesn’t show up – many people are relieved. A cook doesn’t show up and although others might be upset, they rally to fill the void. A dishwasher doesn’t show up and the place falls apart.”

Consider the Dynamics:

Recently, as part of his Knowledge Project, Shane Parrish summarized several maxims from an interview with Ron Shaich, founder of Panera Bread. Those tips include:

• Complexity kills more companies than competition.
• Failing fast works in software, not restaurants.
• The greatest risk is underinvesting in what works.
• There is no balance. You make choices.

 

For Your Reading List:  Working Gigs in a Machine

I Deliver Parcels in Beijing:  The gig economy comes vividly to life in this nonfiction account, a breakout literary hit in China. In a candid, anecdotal style, Hu Anyan puts a human face on the vast logistical engine powering China’s growth, following the daily pressures, ambitions, and ingenious workarounds of frontline delivery workers. It’s an insider look at how relentless algorithms and unforgiving metrics drive a constantly shifting labour pool. Workforce strategists will note a striking contrast between that country’s economic momentum and the lived experience of its essential workers — a compelling, revealing memoir.

 

Closing Thought: It’s Not About Comfort

“We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.”  — novelist Charles Kingsley.

 

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AI Disclosure: This newsletter was hand-crafted and personally curated. In addition to using online research tools, the author made some use of ChatGPT and Gemini Pro for polishing the prose and headings.