You Don’t Need Another Strategy. You Need a Squad.
Many organizations don’t fail at strategy because they lack intelligence, ambition, or care. They fail because strategy is treated like a document instead of a discipline or like a solo act instead of shared stewardship.
Transformation doesn’t happen when a brilliant leader sees the future clearly. It happens when a small, well-formed group of people takes responsibility for carrying strategy forward over time, especially when things get messy. This group is what I call the strategy squad.
The strategy squad is a small, cross-functional group, with real authority and accountability, that is charged with stewarding strategy through the organization. Strategy squads sit at the intersection of thinking and doing. They translate ambition into priorities, decisions, and tradeoffs. And, they stay with the work long enough to see where it breaks.
Strategy squads create ownership throughout the organization. The squad works together. They don’t just “check progress”. They protect focus – they say no with credibility -; they surface tensions and misalignment early; they translate strategy into lived decisions; and they stay deeply connected to the organizational system. And most importantly, they understand that strategy and transformation are developmental. They understand that things do change as the organization executes its strategy and continues to learn.
Effective squads often include people who have built significant relational trust, who think systemically not just functionally, and who can hold ambiguity without rushing to resolution. Most importantly effective squads can challenge power, including their own.
If your organization is serious about transformation, the question isn’t whether you need a squad. It’s whether you’re willing to invest in it, design it intentionally, and support it when the work gets uncomfortable.
Because real strategy doesn’t live in slide decks or documents. It lives in the decisions, relationships, and daily choices people make.