Expanding Your Strategy Team: 3 Proven Ways to Faster Execution

Expanding Your Strategy Team
When leaders plan their next strategy retreat, the instinct is often to keep the group small:

• Tighter logistics.
• Faster discussions.
• Fewer competing voices.

That instinct is understandable, but it is also limiting. If the goal is a strategy that is clear, actionable, and actually executed, expanding your strategy team is not a complication — it is an advantage.

Why Strategy Still Matters
Execution challenges often distract from a simple truth: without a strong strategy, execution is directionless. Our organizational alignment research shows that strategy explains 31% of the performance gap between high- and low-performing organizations across metrics like profitable revenue growth, customer retention, leadership effectiveness, and employee engagement. In other words, strategy is not a document — it is a primary driver of results.

The Execution Gap Is Real
Yet even well-crafted strategies frequently fail. IBM research has long suggested that fewer than 10% of strategies are effectively executed. That gap is not typically caused by flawed ambition — it is caused by disconnects.

• Culture misalignment.
• Talent mismatches.
• Unclear priorities.
• Weak translation into day-to-day actions all undermine even the most compelling strategic intent.

Before solving for execution, leaders must address a foundational issue: strategic clarity.

Strategic Clarity and Commitment Requires Broader Input
A clear strategy is understood, credible, and implementable. That last dimension is where many executive-only strategy processes fall short. C-suite leaders are well-positioned to define direction, but they are often too far removed from operational realities to fully translate strategy into executable work.

Expanding your strategy team introduces the perspectives needed to bridge that gap — connecting strategic ambition to action where it actually happens.

Three Reasons to Consider Expanding Your Strategy Team

1. Grounded, Real-World Perspective
   Including leaders and influencers closer to customers, products, and operations sharpens strategic realism. These individuals bring immediate context — what is working, what is breaking, and where opportunities are emerging.

   Research from MIT Sloan (2017) found that companies that actively incorporate frontline insights into strategic planning are significantly more likely to identify viable growth opportunities and avoid execution breakdowns. Broader input reduces blind spots and surfaces constraints early, when they are still solvable.

   A strategy informed by reality is far more likely to survive contact with it.

2. Reduced Risk of Groupthink
   Homogeneous leadership teams often converge quickly — but not always correctly. Expanding the strategy team introduces cognitive diversity across functions, geographies, tenure, and backgrounds. That diversity challenges assumptions and strengthens decision quality.

   A landmark study by Katherine Phillips (Columbia University) demonstrated that diverse groups consistently outperform homogeneous ones in problem-solving because they process information more rigorously and question implicit biases through constructive debate.

   In practice, this means fewer false agreements, fewer unchallenged assumptions, and a more resilient strategy.

3. Stronger Engagement and Ownership
   Execution is fundamentally a human system. People support what they help create. When key stakeholders are involved early, alignment and commitment is not forced later — it is built from the start.

   Gallup research consistently shows that employee engagement rises when individuals understand how their work connects to broader organizational goals. Expanding your strategy team creates internal advocates who not only understand the plan but can translate it within their teams.

   This shifts strategy from something communicated to something carried.

The Bottom Line
Strategy does not fail because it is written poorly — it fails because it is not lived. Narrow strategy teams often produce polished plans that lack operational traction. Expanding your strategy team may feel slower upfront, but it accelerates execution by increasing clarity, realism, and ownership. In strategy, as in many things, going slower at the start is often the fastest path to results.

To learn more about how to create a clear and compelling strategy that works, download The Top 3 Things to Do After Your Strategy Retreat

by Tristam Brown: CEO

Tristam Brown is an executive business consultant and organizational development expert with more than three decades of experience helping organizations accelerate performance, build high-impact teams, and turn strategy into execution. As CEO of LSA Global, he works with leaders to get and stay aligned™ through research-backed strategy, culture, and talent solutions that produce measurable, business-critical results. See full bio.