"Today's guest, Scott Cook, the cofounder and former CEO of Intuit, who is now its executive committee chair, offers a bit of a counterpoint. He says that in a lot of organizations, success actually depends on senior executives caring not just about what is being worked on, but also on how it's getting done. And he argues that you do have to dig into the weeds of execution pretty routinely to make sure that everyone's following the same process."
"I mean, it reminds me there's not just one way to run a company effectively. And this sort of top-down approach has obviously served a lot of companies well, but something has to give, right? So I assume at the end of the day, this is a prioritization question. Yeah, it's a balance between the big picture and the nitty-gritty. And Cook and his co-author, Nitin Nohria, they have a playbook for how to find that balance."
Senior leaders who care about both what is being worked on and how it is being done can influence organizational success. Hands-on involvement includes digging into execution, ensuring shared processes, and checking that teams follow consistent methods. Balancing strategic direction with attention to operational detail requires a playbook of practices to guide when to intervene and how to standardize work. This approach supports better alignment, consistent decision-making, and improved talent retention without eliminating necessary delegation. Cross-industry examples show that attention to execution complements vision and strategy to drive scalable results.
Read at Harvard Business Review
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