Narrator: Imagine a room of senior executives at a leadership retreat. They're engaged in a business simulation, a high-stakes game where they manage fictional companies. In this game, they can invest in strategic initiatives like "manager training" or "supply chain cost reduction." When they invest, the promised benefits—like lower costs or faster product development—materialize instantly. The path from investment to outcome is direct and guaranteed. During a break, one executive laughs and remarks to the group, "The great thing about these initiatives is that they actually work! In our world, we just spend the money on the initiative, and then it doesn’t help. I wish our initiatives worked this well."

This moment of candid frustration captures a universal truth in the business world: brilliant strategies and expensive change initiatives fail with alarming frequency. The gap between the plan on paper and the reality of execution is a chasm where momentum, money, and morale are lost. In her book, MOVE: How Decisive Leaders Execute Strategy Despite Obstacles, Setbacks, & Stalls, author Patty Azzarello provides a diagnosis for this common failure and a practical framework for overcoming it. She argues that the problem isn't usually the strategy itself, but the organization's inability to navigate the long, difficult journey required to make it real.

Narrator: Patty Azzarello argues that the most critical phase of any strategic transformation is what she calls "The Middle." It’s not the exciting kickoff, filled with vision and energy, nor is it the finish line where success is celebrated. The Middle is the long, arduous, and often unglamorous period where the actual work of change happens. It's here that initial enthusiasm wanes, old habits exert their gravitational pull, and the organization gets stuck. As Azzarello bluntly puts it, "Strategy without execution = talking."

The initial push for change is often fueled by what is known as the Change Equation: Dissatisfaction with the present, multiplied by a Vision for the future, multiplied by the First concrete steps, must be greater than the Resistance to change. This formula explains how initiatives get started. But it doesn't account for how to sustain them. Once the initial steps are taken, the organization enters The Middle, where progress stalls due to systemic challenges. These include teams being too busy with daily tasks, mid-level managers resisting new workflows, decisions getting endlessly debated, and resources never being properly reallocated. The result is organizational angst and a slow death for the strategy, leaving leaders wondering why their significant investments yielded nothing. The core problem is that organizations are rarely prepared for the sheer persistence and defined work required to survive The Middle.

Narrator: To successfully navigate The Middle, Azzarello insists that leaders must move from "smart talk" about problems to defining concrete outcomes. It's easy for teams to spend endless hours admiring a problem, discussing its complexities from every angle. The first step in the MOVE framework is to break this cycle by defining specific, actionable tasks. Instead of a vague goal like "improve customer satisfaction," a concrete outcome would be "reduce customer support ticket resolution time by 25% within six months by implementing a new triage system."

This requires establishing clear control points—metrics that drive action on the right things, not just measure activity. It also demands a confrontation with "resource reality." A strategy is only as real as the resources allocated to it. If the best people and the necessary budget remain tied up in old ways of doing business, the new strategy is just a fantasy. Leaders must make tough, sometimes unpopular, decisions to divert resources to the new priorities. This also means learning to not sign up for the impossible. By being realistic about what can be achieved with the available resources and timeline, leaders can build momentum through achievable wins instead of demoralizing the organization with unattainable goals.

Narrator: Azzarello delivers a stark warning for leaders: "There is no effective antidote for the wrong team." A brilliant strategy for navigating The Middle will fail if the people tasked with executing it are not the right fit. Transformation is difficult, and it requires a team where every single member is fully on board—ready, able, and motivated to move forward. Anyone who is resistant, incapable, or unmotivated acts as a drag on the entire system.

Building the right team isn't about shuffling a few roles; it's about fundamentally rethinking the organizational structure. Azzarello advocates for creating an ideal, "blank-sheet" org chart designed specifically to achieve the desired future outcomes, rather than being constrained by the current structure. Only after designing the ideal structure should leaders begin to fit people into the roles. This process forces clarity on the capabilities needed for the future. It means attracting new talent, developing existing employees, and making the difficult but necessary decisions to remove individuals who are impeding progress. A leader's job is not to lead the team they have, but to build the team they need for the transformation to succeed.

Narrator: The 'V' in the MOVE framework stands for Valor, representing the courage and persistence required to lead through The Middle. This phase is fraught with fear, obstacles, and resistance. Leaders will face pressure to revert to old ways, to water down the strategy, or to get stuck in "decision stall"—the state of perpetual analysis and debate that prevents any forward movement.

Valor means having the courage to "burn the ships at the beach," a metaphor for making a clear and irreversible commitment to the new direction. When everyone knows there is no turning back, it forces focus and alignment. It also requires mastering necessary conflict instead of avoiding it. Productive conflict, where differing ideas are debated openly and respectfully, is essential for uncovering the best path forward. Leaders must create an environment where these debates can happen and then have the valor to make a decision and move on, even with incomplete information. This courage to act, to set ruthless priorities, and to manage outcomes instead of getting lost in the details is what separates leaders who talk about change from those who actually achieve it.

Narrator: Azzarello’s most critical lesson is summarized in a powerful quote: "You can lead a transformation from the top, but you can’t do a transformation from the top." Ultimate success depends on engaging the entire organization and making everyone feel personal ownership over the change. This is the 'E' in MOVE—Everyone.

The author illustrates this with a personal story from early in her career when she was tasked with a major quality improvement initiative. She created a clear plan with assignments and deadlines, and because everything was so well-defined, she assumed the work was getting done. She quickly realized her mistake. There was a massive gap between commitment and execution. Tasks were slipping because no one was actively tracking the day-to-day progress. She was saved by her process manager, Scott Jordan, who took on the crucial but unglamorous work of following up, tracking tasks, and reporting on progress. Scott bridged the gap between commitment and completion.

This story reveals a vital truth: leaders cannot personally ensure every task gets done. They must build systems that empower everyone. This involves changing communication from top-down directives to rich, ongoing conversations. It means "decorating the change"—using rituals, artifacts, and even changes to the physical workspace to make the new strategy highly visible and real to everyone, every day. It’s about building a culture of trust and accountability where people are empowered to execute, knowing that the systems are in place to support them and track their progress.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from MOVE is that successful strategy execution is not a matter of brilliance, but of persistence. The difference between success and failure is determined in the messy, challenging "Middle," and navigating it requires a deliberate, structured approach. A great strategy is not an idea; it is a series of concrete actions, taken consistently over time by a capable and motivated team that is supported by courageous leadership.

The book's most challenging idea is its insistence that leaders must be architects of execution, not just visionaries. It’s not enough to create a compelling plan. A leader's true test is whether they can build the organizational engine—the right team, the right systems, and the right culture—to power through the inevitable obstacles and stalls. The ultimate challenge Azzarello leaves us with is to look past the strategic plan on the wall and ask: have we built the capacity for our people to actually do it?