Most leadership teams are genuinely good at strategy. However, research from McKinsey and BCG shows that only about 30% of large-scale transformations successfully capture expected value and sustain those improvements over time. According to author Steven Morris, the challenge almost never lies in what was decided, but whether three necessary conditions for effective execution have actually been built.
The author calls this The Readiness Triad:
1. Appetite: The energy behind the decision
Consensus happens in the room. Appetite happens afterward—when priorities collide, when work becomes inconvenient, and when people have to decide what they will protect.
Core Concept: It is the degree of people’s full commitment to the outcome and the experience of it as theirs to shape. Drawing on Edward Deci and Richard Ryan’s Self-determination theory, compliance produces effort only to the point where work gets hard. Ownership produces effort through that friction.
How to Build:
- Authorship: Involving people and truly listening before the plan is fully formed.
- Meaning: Helping people draw a clean line between the work and what they personally stand for.
2. Capacity: What the system can sustain
Appetite tells you whether people want to carry the work. Capacity tells you whether the system surrounding them—the organization, the team, the individual—can sustain it.
Core Concept: It is about how much a system can absorb before it begins to fracture—including the cognitive focus and physiological resilience that high-quality, sustainable work requires. As neuroscientist Bruce McEwen’s explains, chronic stress taxes biological systems.
How to Build: Rather than just asking “Can we squeeze this in?”, leaders create capacity by deferring an initiative, clarifying decision ownership, shifting resources, and protecting time for uninterrupted thinking.
3. Skillset: Job-level capability
Even when appetite and capacity are present, a remaining question is whether the people responsible for execution have the skills the work requires.
Core Concept: Skill gaps are not personal failures; they are structural realities. According to Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard’s situational leadership model, capability is task-specific rather than a fixed trait.
How to Build: Assessing the gap between what the job demands and current capabilities, then bridging it through coaching, pairing, or stretch assignments that expand responsibility step-by-step.
Conclusion
Before rolling out any significant strategy, leaders must pause and ask whether their team has true appetite, capacity, and skillset in place. All of these conditions must be met before your team can execute successfully.
Source: Harvard Business Review
