Strategic Speed: Mobilize People, Accelerate Execution

THREE

Leaders Affirm Strategies

IN CHAPTER 2, we noted that the first two leadership practices—affirming strategies and driving initiatives—come to the fore when there’s a need for speed in initiative execution. Although these practices can apply to almost any type of initiative or project, we’re going to talk about them here as they apply to large-scale strategic initiatives: big change efforts in which you’re trying to implement a new strategy or new direction for your organization or business unit.

In this chapter, we’ll focus on affirming strategies. Our Global Speed Survey (see appendix A) confirmed that “Creating a shared understanding of the business strategy” is one of the top leadership capabilities that differentiate ...