On Sunday I watched the World Cup final with my mother. We’d started off in a bar in Ciudad Rodrigo, where we spend a few days together every summer. She’s past ninety now and, though she’s never been much of a football fan, she wanted to watch the final. At half-time we headed home.
But in that bar, at one point, someone said: “Just as well they couldn’t sign anyone for the final.”
We laughed. And someone else shot back: “Imagine. Every time a team had a problem, it’d just buy another player.”
The conversation moved on. I didn’t.
Let’s be honest: you’re nothing like them
I know what usually comes next: take the winning national side and squeeze ten leadership lessons out of it for your company. Let me save you the trouble. Any resemblance between that group and a normal team of workers is pure coincidence.
There, the one who’s 28 isn’t the kid, he’s the veteran. The temptation to compare is huge, but the differences are vast. Why they won is complicated, and it certainly has nothing to do with what the rest of us do. So I’m not going to explain their success to you. But that joke in the bar did stay with me. Not about them. About us.
Do you really lack people, or do you lack the capacity to execute?
What often holds growth back is not a shortage of people but a lack of execution capability: a full org chart does not mean you can deliver the strategy.
Because I’ve spent years hearing the same thing. Not from footballers: from directors, engineers, plant managers, salespeople. Whatever the sector. When I ask what’s holding growth back, the answer tends to be: “We’re short of people.”
Sometimes that’s true. Often, what’s missing isn’t people.
A full org chart isn’t the capacity to execute
We look at the org chart — every box filled, every role with a name on it — and we think we already know what our team is capable of. But a complete org chart isn’t the same as the capacity to deliver. And confusing the two is expensive.
A full org chart doesn’t mean you have the capacity to execute.
When the same role fails three times, the problem isn’t the vacancy
An example from a few weeks ago. June, a meeting with a management committee. They’d spent months trying to fill a position. The role had changed name three times in a short spell: it started out as a directorship, became a hybrid post, and ended up as something else. The search had been open for more than seven months. We spent almost an hour going round in circles on how to finally find this person.
Until someone asked a different question: “What if the problem isn’t that vacancy?”
We pulled the thread. Nobody had ever quite defined what that person was meant to achieve. Their manager barely had time to support them. And when we talke to the two people who’d been in the role before they said much the same thing.
Three searches hadn’t failed. The same system had failed three times.
Remember the bar story
Signing someone is the last move, not the first
A coach, even if he wanted to, can’t sort that out by buying a new player every Monday. He’s left with the hard part:
- Understanding what’s going on
- Changing the approach
- Moving people around
- Making each person’s responsibility clear
- Getting the one who isn’t ready yet ready
- Taking uncomfortable decisions.
Sometimes, yes, taking someone off too. But that’s never the first move.
Do you need another signing, or a look at the capacity you already have?
Some companies do not need another signing; they need to review the execution capability they already have before going out to buy more.
And believe me, it would suit me to keep quiet: we make our living finding talent. The easy thing would be to tell you to hire more.
Sometimes you’ll need to, of course. But after hundreds of searches I’ve learned something that’s almost uncomfortable to say, because it goes against my own business.
Some companies don’t need another signing. They need to look at the capacity they already have before going out to buy more.
The Thursday test: where a team’s capacity really lives
That’s why, when a client tells me “I need you to find someone”, I try to ask something else first: tell me what this person’s Thursday will look like.
Not the first day, not the interview, not the offer. The Thursday.
- Who’ll talk to them?
- Who’ll explain how decisions get made here?
- Who’ll tell them what doing this job well actually means?
- Who’ll have time to develop them?
Because a team’s capacity isn’t in the org chart. It’s in those answers.
What do you discover when the context changes?
When the context changes, your real execution capability shows: single-person dependencies, managers quietly covering their team’s work, and processes that only worked in ideal conditions.
That only then do you see the real capacity you had. In companies we look at the filled positions and last quarter’s results, and we think we know what team we’ve got. Until the game changes. A key person leaves. Sales take off. A competitor shows up. The strategy starts to demand capabilities that weren’t needed before.
And then we discover the usual: that a whole plant depended so heavily on one person that they were getting calls at three in the morning — if they weren’t there, the line stopped — that some managers had spent months quietly covering their team’s work, that the company only worked as long as nothing out of the ordinary happened.
Strategy, structure and people: how execution capability is built
None of those problems gets solved with a signing. They get solved by looking at three things, in order:
- What the strategy really demands
- Whether the structure you have can hold it
- And what your people contribute today (and what they could contribute if you prepared them)
Strategy, structure and people. That’s the capacity to execute, and it’s built before the context changes, not once it’s already gone wrong.
The real question isn’t why they won
Let’s go back to the final for a moment. The easy question is why that side won. I’ve already told you I don’t know, and that it barely matters: it’s a group of 26 one-in-a-million players, so far from your day-to-day that there’s no lesson to copy.
The good question is a different one. What if we could achieve that — looking after the capacity, sustaining the performance, the contribution and the wellbeing of a team — without it having to be an extraordinary group? Not with 26 stars. With a normal group. Even when it’s not 26 people, but 189, 712 or 1,000.
You can’t buy that. You build it. And, unlike in football, it doesn’t depend on who you can sign: it depends on what you built before the game changed.
If you’d like, let’s take a look together. All the best.
Article originally published on LinkedIn.
FAQ
What is execution capability? It is a team’s real ability to turn strategy into results. It isn’t measured by the filled boxes on an org chart, but by what the organisation can actually do when the context changes.
Why does the same role keep failing even when you change the person? Because when three different people fail in the same position, the problem is no longer the person but the system: an ill-defined role, no manager support and no clarity on what success looks like.
Does hiring more solve a shortage of people? Not always. Hiring without first reviewing the execution capability you already have usually just passes the problem to the next person. Sometimes you need to hire; often you need to redesign.
How is execution capability built? By looking at three things in order: what the strategy demands, whether your structure can hold it, and what your people contribute today. Strategy, structure and people — it’s built before the context changes, not once it has.
