I am a risk taker. Yes. I started my consulting firm in 2007. I left a big-paying job and went to swim in the deep end—on my own. You learn a lot in the private sector. How to land your first job. How to hire your first employee. How to meet compliance. How to pay taxes on invoices even before you are paid. How to chase payments. How to survive. It’s brutal. But you learn in two years what the “safe players” won’t learn in twenty.
Five years ago, when I was called into a manufacturing firm that was bleeding cash and sat across from the founder, desperate to turn things around, I didn’t need to ask how it felt. I knew. I’d lived it. That’s why my advice wasn’t theoretical.
They had launched a new product line. Hired staff. Imported machines. Started marketing. But cash was vanishing faster than they could count it.
I start every consulting assignment with a thorough assessment – a comprehensive analysis of the past and current state. After reviewing documents and engaging with staff, I asked the EXCO team during the briefing meeting, “Who trained the new team on how to execute this new model?”
The room went quiet.
Then came the usual answer: “They should know. That’s why we hired them.”
That assumption is the silent killer of execution.
Most companies do not have a strategy problem. They have a training vacuum. The people want to help. But no one has shown them how. The skills gap is a huge challenge to execution.
In that factory, the staff were misusing machines, skipping processes, and guessing their way through work. Not because they were lazy, but because no one had rehearsed the new game with them.
Execution is not common sense. It is choreography. It is a productive habit.
That’s why I always teach this: Train for the new normal, or pay for the old chaos.
Don’t just launch a strategy. Rehearse it.
You need the execution rehearsal sprint
This week, pick one priority. Sit with the team responsible. Don’t review slides. Walk through the actual execution steps. One by one. What must happen? By whom? When? What tools? Where is the bottleneck? Do it again next week. Then again.
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Mr. Strategy’s execution rehearsal sprint. Focus.
Print this. Use it in your Monday brief. Choose one strategic initiative. Walk your team through this sprint. Stop assuming. Start rehearsing. Execution is not a speech. It is a skill. You don’t need more KPIs. You need more training. You can’t scale what people don’t understand.
I remain Mr. Strategy
