We had the wrong people for the strategic choices we made

This is part 5 of a 6 series post on execution

I used to think execution problems were mostly about discipline and reviewing dashboards.

Wrong metrics. Weak follow-through. Poor communication. A lack of urgency. If a team was struggling, I’d reach for the usual management toolkit. More meetings. Clearer owners. RACI charts. Tighter timelines. Extra coaching. Even more dashboards. Surely one more spreadsheet would save us. And coincidently, sometimes it helped. But over time I learned there’s a harder explanation leaders often avoid because it feels cruel, arrogant, or politically dangerous. Sometimes (maybe, most of the time?) the problem is the people. Not bad people. Not lazy people. Usually the opposite. Smart, committed, decent humans doing honest work. But still the wrong people for the strategy we chose.

That makes people tense because we prefer to believe every good person can thrive in every environment with enough support. Maybe, with enough time, they would. But business and competition do not wait for people to develop. It’s a lovely idea but collapses on contact with reality. You can thank capitilism.

Strategies change. Markets shift. Technology resets the board. Growth becomes efficiency. Efficiency becomes innovation. A conservative company suddenly needs boldness. A reckless company suddenly needs discipline and judgment. Even Meta (when they were Facebook) went from “Move fast and break things” to “Move fast with stable infrastructure”. What made someone valuable yesterday may matter less tomorrow. This requires different mindset, and likely, different people.

I’ve been on both sides of it. I’ve led teams where the business changed direction but the team did not. I’ve also been the person realizing my strengths were drifting out of fashion in real time. Nothing humbles you quite like becoming legacy infrastructure while still employed. When strategy changes, people requirements change with it.

Now you need different judgment. Different speed. Different tolerance for ambiguity. Different appetite for conflict. Builders become maintainers. Maintainers need builders. Diplomats are replaced by operators. Operators are told to smile more. Corporate life has range. Not everyone wants the next version of the company. Not everyone should.

The Hard Conversation

One of my biggest mistakes was pretending fit problems were performance problems. I’d tell myself someone needed more time. More coaching. More clarity. Better cross-functional support. Another quarter. A cleaner org chart. Perhaps a stronger moon cycle. Sometimes those things were true, who couldn’t use a stronger moon cycle?!

More often, it was a story I told myself to avoid a harder conversation. Sometimes the harder conversation is role change. Sometimes it is exit. Keeping someone in a role they don’t fit isn’t kindness. It’s procrastination disguised as empathy. That line stings because I earned every word of it. You delay clarity for them. You slow momentum for the team. You overload the people carrying the gap. Then you get to feel compassionate while solving nothing. A good deal for the ego.

Loyalty makes this all the more complicated. Some people were exactly right for an earlier chapter. They helped build the place. They carried pain others avoided. They earned trust. Then the company changed, and instead of admitting fit had changed too, leaders bend strategy to preserve familiar faces.

That’s how strategies and execution quietly shrink. Not because the market rejected them. Because honesty felt uncomfortable in a conference room.

The hardest leadership move is not hiring someone impressive with a polished résumé and expensive opinions. That move gets applause. The harder move is looking at the future you chose and admitting it may require different people, different roles, or different expectations. Then saying it clearly, respectfully, and early.People usually know anyway. They feel uneven workloads. They sense stalled momentum. They watch certain people burn hot while others drift cold. They notice when everyone keeps discussing process while avoiding the human reality standing in the room.

We love to say execution failed because it protects everyone. Sometimes execution didn’t fail. We asked people to become someone they never signed up to be.

This is part 1 of a 6 part series on execution

1. I Blamed Execution. The Truth is Much Harder.
2. They never truly believed in the strategy.
3. Incentives, rewards, and mechanisms reinforced behaviors that conflicted with the strategy.
4. We hadn’t developed the skills the strategy required.
5. We had the wrong people for the strategic choices we made.
6. We measured execution poorly — or not at all.