20 Jan People Are the Strategy
One of the top priorities for leaders in the current environment is to build teams that work well together to drive strategy forward. Sounds like a no brainer. Great strategy and great teams have always been a business goal.
But the truth is, they haven’t always been the norm.
In the past, you may have relied on stability when it came to building your team and sharing your strategy. When each day was relatively similar to the one before it, history was a good predictor of the future. Plus, teams that had been working together for a while made things go smoothly.
For a long time, having a strategy that was clearly understood by a strong team didn’t feel that urgent. But in the reality that leaders are operating in now, it’s important to excel with both a clear strategy and a cohesive team. In fact, you can’t have one without the other.
Here’s why.
First, there are a lot of newly formed teams out there. Some because of layoffs, furloughs, or necessary restructurings. Others from turnover in people moving on or opting out. And it seems most of us are having a hard time filling open positions in this competitive recruiting environment. Whatever the reason, teams are in flux. This presents a challenge when it comes to sharing strategy and translating that to your team. Both strategy and your team are moving targets.
Even teams that appear intact aren’t “together” in the same way they once were. Hybrid and remote work are now a permanent feature of how work gets done, and while they offer flexibility and autonomy, they also require stronger intention from leaders. Bringing new people into the team, reinforcing shared priorities, and creating real cohesion take more than an annual retreat or a single planning meeting. Without deliberate effort, teams might operate in parallel rather than in sync.
Layered onto this is an ongoing sense of uncertainty. Are you feeling stuck? Have you been less decisive in the last year? If so, join the club. Many leaders report feeling less decisive than they’d like to be, not because they lack capability, but because conditions keep shifting. It can feel prudent to wait for more information before committing to a direction. The risk is that when leaders hesitate to engage their teams in real strategy conversations, people are left to interpret priorities on their own.
Finally, burnout and disengagement continue to be critical leadership issues. Gallup’s 2025 State of the Global Workplace report shows that global employee engagement fell to 21% last year, with disengagement costing the world economy an estimated $438 billion in lost productivity. When people don’t feel clear about where the organization is headed or how their work matters, it becomes much harder for teams to move forward together.
These challenges point to making team cohesion a strategic priority. If you want to build momentum for the year ahead, involve your team in a strategy process. Use your strategy discussions as a focal point for people to rally around. They’ll be more engaged with plans, aligned with each other, and motivated collectively to hit the ground running in the new year.
For families in business, success is not just measured in fiscal years, but over generations. Yet often, leaders are so focused on the day-to-day that they aren’t able to step back and focus on the issues that impact long-term sustainability. We help leadership teams assess where they are now, where they’re trying to go and how they’re going to get there. Our expertise in the areas of organizational strategy, structure, process and performance is a unique feature of our work, and integral to our transition management approach.
Most leaders accept that at some time in the future, their time at the helm will end and the business will be given into the care of the next leader. However, just thinking about the transition can be daunting and overwhelming for the senior leader. If that weren’t enough, most owners experience their own succession just once. Tandem Partners provides the experience and professional guidance needed to move through the strategic, operational and interpersonal issues that are all a part of transition.