Reduce, reuse, recycle”is a rallying cry for sustaining our planet’s precious resources. Guess what? We can apply that same mantra to sustain our own organizational precious resources. The limited resources at stake are time, money, and people. By adopting these principles, we can turn scarcity into opportunity, creating leaner, more focused, and more effective teams who have the capacity to execute our new strategies.

We’re naturally wired to believe that adding more is the solution—more resources, more tools, more tasks…more complexity. Yet, as research shows, this instinct for addition can bog us down, leading to diminishing returns. 

Crafting a strategy is hard work. After investing time and energy into crafting a thoughtful plan, it can be tempting to call it done and move on. But here’s the truth: no strategy is perfect, and that’s okay.

The key to success isn’t perfection. It’s pressure-testing your strategy to refine it, uncover blind spots, and build support before execution. This step is called validation, and it’s the secret to turning good strategies into great ones.

Why Validation is Essential

Strategies created in a vacuum rarely hold up under real-world conditions. Without input from diverse perspectives, it’s too easy to miss critical risks or practical realities. That’s where validation comes in.

Have you ever been in a meeting where every voice seemed to clash, ideas spiraled in circles, and no clear decisions emerged? Frustrating, isn’t it? I’ve been in more of those than I care to remember.

Dr. Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats method is here to save the day. Developed in 1985, this simple yet powerful framework transforms chaotic discussions into structured, focused collaboration. By guiding teams to explore every angle of a problem systematically, it fosters open dialogue, minimizes defensiveness, and ensures every perspective is heard—without letting egos derail the process. Doesn’t that sound nice?

We've all heard experts say, "Get the right people in the room" when it comes to building a strategy. But what does that even mean? Vague advice like this isn’t helpful unless we dig deeper. Who are these people, why do they matter, and how do we leverage their insights effectively? Without clarity on this, we risk missing essential voices or creating a strategy that lacks focus.

So, what does it mean to get the right people in the room? Here are three key objectives:

Leadership has traditionally been about calling the shots from the top—a vision set by the leaders, a plan laid out, and the team expected to follow. But recent insights into how humans work best are turning this model on its head. Science says that when we co-create, we boost both engagement and outcomes in a way that top-down management can’t touch.

Let’s be clear: co-creation isn’t just another trendy term. It is a powerful way to improve strategic outcomes that adds both value and loyalty to any plan. When people play a part in creating a strategy, they’re way more likely to support it. And the reason why is rooted in some fascinating science – a mix of psychology, neuroscience, and even economics – that shows why shared creation sticks.

The key to a successful strategy often lies in what you decide not to do. While it might seem counterintuitive, defining what you won't pursue can be more impactful than defining what you will. By spelling out these "why nots" and "what nots," you sharpen your focus and reinforce your distinct position in the market. This process helps both leaders and teams clarify what the organization stands for, ultimately bringing sharper focus and resilience to strategic decisions.

Failing to prioritize well is one of the greatest disservices leaders can do to their teams. But prioritizing effectively is also one of the hardest things to do. 

Prioritization is the bridge between clarity and capacity. Without a clear focus from leaders, teams drift, resources are wasted, and strategic goals slip through the cracks.

Why Stack Ranking Matters

To effectively allocate resources, you have to do more than identify a list of important initiatives—you need to stack rank them. This means putting your initiatives, projects, or tasks in a clear order of importance where there is only one #1, one #2, and so on. Regardless of any specific methodology you use to help determine importance—whether it’s impact assessments, ROI models, timeline sequencing, or other sophisticated approaches—stack ranking remains critical. It ensures that your team knows exactly where to focus their energy, empowers them to make decisions, and aligns their efforts without constant guidance.

Convenience. We value it more than I think we sometimes realize. We’re willing to pay more for it, and we’re willing to sacrifice quality in exchange for it. So it stands to reason that delivering convenience for our customers can lead to a pretty profitable equation for retailers.

The threshold for inconvenience continues to get ever lower. We often complain about how many clicks it takes to get to what we’re looking for on a web page. Think about that for a moment. The energy required to cause our index fingers to press a button too many times is irritating. Some might say it’s not the energy, it’s the time. OK, fair enough. Then the “waste of time” threshold starts kicking in when we are forced to wait three to four seconds for a page to load. We’re busy! We haven’t got that kind of time to waste!

But this post isn’t a social commentary. It’s about recognizing an opportunity to serve customers and grow our businesses.

So, how can we focus our businesses on the convenience opportunity?

Imagine if every decision you made could make or break your company's future. Every day, employees at all levels are bombarded with decisions that shape the organization's trajectory. Each choice, no matter how seemingly small, has a ripple effect. Are your decisions propelling your company forward, or are they holding you back?

According to McKinsey, companies make tens of thousands of decisions daily, yet only 20% of them are considered high-quality decisions. How can we ensure our decisions are among the high-quality ones? Executing a strategy involves navigating a sea of choices, big and small. Leaders can’t possibly oversee all of them. In fact, most decisions happen far from the executive suite, carried out by people on the front lines. As Matt O’Connell, CEO of Vistaly, told me, “On the ground, it’s the day-to-day, nitty-gritty stuff where you need to make quick decisions. The executives don’t care about the details—they just want the problem solved.”

Making good decisions quickly is critical, but it’s not easy. Decision-making is influenced by a number of factors—ranging from cognitive biases to stress and emotional pressures—that can cloud judgment and lead to inconsistent or rushed choices.

Imagine you and your competitors all enter a pact: share your biggest revenue streams, pool your marketing, and match payrolls dollar for dollar. Everyone sells the exact same product. You'd think your companies would perform similarly, right?

This is what the NFL tries to achieve—an even playing field, where teams share profits, keep payrolls capped, and have a level shot at success. Yet, what has actually happened? Some teams rise year after year, while others (like my beloved Cleveland Browns) consistently struggle. Why?

Is it just luck? Or are there deeper lessons here—lessons for any business trying to understand the true costs of change?

“Defending the status quo is what kills companies.” That insight from Rich Teerlink and Lee Ozley’s More Than a Motorcycle rings just as true now as it did when they wrote it in 2000. They described how Harley-Davidson didn’t wait for a crisis to change—they transformed their culture right after a financial turnaround when the company was being praised for its success. Most would have stayed the course, but Harley knew that holding onto the status quo is the surest way to fail.

In today’s fast-moving world, companies that cling to “what’s always worked” run a serious risk of being overtaken by more nimble, customer-focused competitors. The names of companies that didn’t evolve—Kodak, Blockbuster, Nokia, and much of the music industry—are stark reminders of what happens when businesses fail to adapt to new realities.

When it comes to motivating teams to execute a strategy, financial incentives like bonuses, commissions, and stock options often take center stage. While these rewards are effective, they don’t tell the full story. One of the most powerful, yet often overlooked, motivators in the workplace is social incentives. Recognition, accountability, and the need to belong frequently prove just as effective—if not more—than financial rewards in driving engagement and performance.

Monetary rewards alone rarely keep people motivated day in and day out. What truly drives many of us is a sense of purpose, recognition from our peers, and a personal connection to the work we do. Almost all of us want to feel like we’re part of something bigger and that our contributions matter. In fact, neuroscience shows that when we receive recognition, the brain’s reward centers light up in much the same way as when we receive financial compensation. This means social incentives are wired into us, deeply influencing our behavior at work.

Saying “No” is hard, especially if you’re an optimist like me. It can feel awkward, even risky. Saying “Yes,” on the other hand, feels great—it’s productive, optimistic, full of possibility. So it’s tempting to say “Yes” to everything that seems promising. But here’s the paradox: saying “Yes” to too many things often overwhelms your team, scattering their focus and preventing them from dedicating their best efforts to what truly matters.

Over the years, I’ve discovered that the most powerful tool for success isn’t saying “Yes”—it’s learning to say “No.” For leaders, this is one of the most essential skills to master if you want to maintain focus and drive meaningful results.

I’ve found a simple trick that makes it easier to say “No”

Let’s face it: nobody likes constraints at first. We all want freedom—more resources, more budget, more tools. But here’s the twist: constraints are actually our friend. Knowing what you can’t do helps you laser-focus on what you can do. Instead of chasing every possibility, you zero in on what really matters.

When a new strategy is on the table, there’s often a push for “more”—more money, more people, more time. But guess what? Adding more tends to makes things messier. More complexity, more decisions, more things to manage. The real magic happens when it’s clear that more isn’t coming. That’s when everyone rolls up their sleeves and figures out how to make it work with what they’ve got.

In a world where more is often mistaken for better, the true effectiveness lies in how much you can remove while still retaining the essence of what matters. Whether it’s crafting a concise email, delivering a powerful presentation, or defining a focused strategy, simplicity isn’t just a stylistic choice—it’s a necessity.

One of the most frustrating pitfalls in communication is something known as the Curse of Knowledge. It happens when we're so familiar with a subject that we speak in jargon, acronyms, or insider language—and confuse the heck out of our audience. This is a dangerous trap, particularly when presenting new strategies or analyzing performance. We think we’re being clear, but our audience is left bewildered and unsure of what to do with the information we’re conveying.

The Ladder of Abstraction, a concept coined by linguist S.I. Hayakawa and recently highlighted in an article by Big Think, provides a useful tool to avoid this trap. It helps us shift between high-level, abstract ideas and specific, grounded details that ensure our message is not just heard but understood.

What is the Ladder of Abstraction?

In a world full of distractions, clear communication is more crucial than ever. Learn how to cut through the noise, simplify your message, and make sure your audience truly gets it. Read on for four practical tips will help you ensure your message is heard loud and clear—no matter the setting.

If your organization has a hierarchy then so should your metrics.

KPI Trees are a great way to connect the entire organization to the ultimate success metric while giving people at all levels a clear view of how their work connects to the ultimate success metric and to the work of other teams.

So what the heck is a KPI Tree?

A KPI Tree is a multi-level, mathematically connected view of the building blocks of the business.

I find KPI Trees are a critical way for everyone in the organization to understand how the business actually works. They provide clarity for each person to understand how the work they do drives a higher-level metric. And, conversely, they can see how something they are pushing might detract from a different metric. For example, one team might develop a service program in a retail store that requires a service counter that is fully staffed all day long. However, that dedicated use of labor might cause a Sales Per Labor Hour metrics to go sideways and ultimately negatively impact the profitable growth.

How do you build a KPI Tree?

Did you know that we humans can’t walk in a straight line without visual cues to keep us focused on our path? Not only can’t we walk straight, we actually walk in circles if we can’t clearly see where we’re going.

It seems we also drive our businesses in circles if we don’t have strong focal points like clearly defined visions, goals and strategies.

It’s easy to see the parallels in our business environments. Without a clear vision of where we’re going, it’s easy veer off course. In the business world, we’re constantly bombarded by internal and external demands for short-term change. Those demands are often driven by overly narrow data analysis (such as daily or even hourly comps), emotional reactions, gut feel, wild ideas, competitive shifts, and more.

So what do we do about it?

I’m ignorant. And so are you. Frankly, we’re all ignorant. It’s not an insult. It’s just an acknowledgment that none of us can be all-knowing.

I recently learned about the concept of the Iceberg of Ignorance, a term popularized by a 1989 study by Sidney Yoshida. Yoshida’s research revealed a startling disparity in awareness of problems within organizations: frontline workers were aware of 100% of the floor problems, supervisors were aware of only 74%, middle managers knew about 9%, and senior executives were aware of a mere 4% of the issues.

While this concept was initially targeted at executives, it’s a universal truth. Any small group, or even individuals, experiences this iceberg effect. The notion that senior executives are the most ignorant of the problems is striking, but let’s be honest: ignorance permeates all levels. Supervisors miss out on what frontline workers know, corporate managers don’t fully grasp the supervisors’ challenges, and even frontline workers don’t everything going in their environments.

But what can we do about it?