Editor's Note On June 18th, classical minds Chris McChesney and Scott Thele spoke. 4 Discipline of execution spend 90 minutes A group of CEOs and a live working session built around addressing the execution challenges that will define 2026.. All registrants will receive the 2026 Execution Handbook, a pre-work tool designed to work collaboratively with your leadership team, prior to the event. Please bring your true situation. Make a plan and go. Why not join us >
Try this before you read another word about running.
Before comparing notes, ask each member of the leadership team individually what the single outcome is most important to the business at this time. Write down what they would say. Next, collect your answers.
If you have never done this exercise before, the results will likely be unpleasant. According to Chris McChesney and Scott Tele, most organizations 4 Discipline of execution–The answers don't match. It's not yours. Not each other. Not even close. And that mismatch, more than tariff shocks, market disruptions, or fears about AI, is actually killing enforcement.
Want to stay on track? There are six more questions. It doesn't take long. However, it can tell you more about the health of your organization's operations than the last quarterly review.
1. Look at your calendar for the past two weeks. What percentage of your time do you spend running your business vs. what percentage of your time do you spend working on it?
Please be honest. Most CEOs go through this exercise and find that the ratio is very uncomfortable and not in the direction they expected. A fast-paced daily grind of customer issues, team issues, and a never-ending stream of urgent decisions consumes approximately 80% of an organization's energy. It's not a failure. That's the reality. Businesses have to run.
The problem is when that 80 percent quietly becomes 95 or 100. This is when reacting to the present crowds out engagement with the future. One CEO explained this to McChesney: “I'm concerned that it's starting to seep into the culture because we've been responding for so long, and we think that's our job.”
If this happens, your improvement efforts will inevitably go to waste if running your business and improving it no longer feel like separate tasks. It's not dramatic. Quietly. So let's move on to the next question.
2. Think about the last important initiative. Did he die all at once, or did he suffocate slowly?
McChesney asks this question of his leadership team all the time. Each time, the response was almost unanimous, from 96 to 100 percent of the room, that the initiative had been moved slowly and quietly, rather than all at once.
It wasn't the resistance that killed it. It wasn't a bad strategy. It wasn't the wrong people. It was busy. Everyone agreed, everyone committed, and a few weeks passed with nothing really moving. The initiative was not protected from the whirlwind. It was consumed by it.
This is the diagnosis. The next question is even more difficult.
3. If you subtract what the whirlwind has already dealt with and what can be solved with one decision, what is left?
Most leadership teams move quickly to choosing priorities. McChesney and Telle argue that's the wrong starting point. Remove what is already covered before choosing what to focus on disproportionately.
What results are you already seeing from your day-to-day business operations? What doesn't require changing your team's behavior and can be solved simply by hiring, contracting, capital allocation decisions, etc.? Eliminate them. What's left after both subtractions is where the real breakthrough goal lies.
This remainder is usually smaller and more specific than people expect. That's the point. “Strategy doesn't mean much,” McChesney said. “Strategy means choices.”
4. Can you write your most important goal in one sentence? From X to Y, by when?
It's not a theme. It's not a direction. One concrete, measurable result with a time limit.
“Improving customer retention” is not a revolutionary goal. “We will increase the renewal rate from 74% to 85% by the third quarter.” The difference is not only semantic. The first is to force the team to take no action. The second gives them a view of the finish line from where they are standing.
If you can't write your most important goal (one metric, one sentence, one deadline) that way, you haven't found it yet. And here's a test that embodies that. If you put this goal in front of your frontline team now, will they know what to do on Monday morning? If not, it's still too big. Let's keep narrowing it down.
5. Where is AI making teams more whirlwind, rather than less?
This is a question most leadership teams aren't asking, and they should be. When it comes to AI, the instinct is to lead with technology. What tools should I use? How can I get more out of AI? Where am I falling behind? Thele argues that this instinct is exactly the opposite. “AI without clarity is a drawback,” he says.
The evidence is everywhere. Teams spend more time evaluating tools than using them, an explosion of information that demands attention it doesn't deserve, and role confusion about who does what as AI blurs organizational lines.
The teams that are making progress are not the ones that are doing the most AI work. They're the ones who started with a specific breakthrough goal and then asked, “What results are on the table now that weren't there before?” First, narrow your focus. Your goals will determine where your AI will work. Not the other way around.
6. Does your team have weekly meetings about commitments rather than status updates?
This is the issue that separates organizations that do from those that do. Accountability cadences, short weekly meetings where all team members commit to one or two things they will do this week to achieve breakthrough goals, are the mechanism that turns clarity into results. Without it, even the most well-defined goals will drift.
The distinction is important. A status update reports what happened. Commitment declares what will happen. One is passive. The other thing is the contract with the team.
McChesney clearly states the mode of failure. Too many leaders, he says, make a declaration and move on — never following up, never following up, and never binding anyone, including themselves, to what is said.
“Edge belongs to those who have an execution system that is more durable than disruption,” says Thele.
