Turning Strategy into Results by Leading with Clarity, Connection, and Purpose

Welcome to the first edition of Coach with Purpose. Win Big.

This newsletter is for leaders who want to build high-performing teams without losing sight of what matters most: people. Each edition will offer practical insights on leadership, coaching, execution, and culture. All rooted in real experience from leading large, diverse teams across functions and industries.

Let’s kick things off with one of the most important challenges I’ve faced, and one you’ve likely wrestled with too:

How do you turn a bold vision into actual results… without losing your team in the process?

From Vision to Execution: How Great Leaders Turn Strategy into Results

The quarter has ended. It’s 8:45 a.m. and forty+ managers are dialed in for our weekly call. Performance was off track, and tension filled the room. I shared a single slide titled “30 Day Sales Accelerator.” Halfway through, one of our newest frontline leaders sent me a private message asking “Eric, what do I need to start doing tomorrow for my team?”

That question exposed the gap between strategy and execution, and reshaped how I lead to this day.

Strategy is the easy part. Execution is where leaders are made.

Most teams don’t fail because they lack ideas. They fail because the vision never makes it off the whiteboard. Because the plan never survives contact with the real world. Because the people doing the work were left out of the conversation.

Over the last 20 years leading teams of 20 to 450, I’ve seen this pattern repeat itself across every industry and function. But I’ve also learned something textbooks rarely mention:

Leadership is the bridge.

Between big ideas and actual results. Between corporate decks and front-line clarity. Between the business plan and the people who bring it to life.

The good news? That bridge can be built, and here’s how.

1. Start with Vision

A compelling vision gives people something to believe in. It creates alignment, energy, and clarity. But here’s the trap: most leaders stop at inspiration.

One of the most powerful ways I’ve made vision stick is by meeting with team members several levels below me and simply asking, “Do you understand the why, how, and what of what we’re doing?” Their answers often revealed blind spots and helped us clarify the message from the top down.

Simply asking, “Do you understand the why, how, and what of what we’re doing?”

If your vision isn’t anchored to behaviors, goals, and team-level impact, it’s just a poster in the break room.

Tactics to make it tangible:

Translate your vision into simple, team-facing language. Use real-life scenarios and analogies that connect to their daily work.
Reinforce the vision during standups, 1:1s, and team meetings. Repetition builds clarity.
Identify 2 to 3 behaviors that reflect the vision. Measure them. Coach to them. Recognize them in action.
Tie the vision to values. For example, if your vision is about innovation, empower your team to test new ideas without fear of failure.

2. Align Strategy to That Vision

Strategy is how you turn vision into reality. It’s the blueprint for your priorities, your investments, your direction. It’s the plan behind the purpose.

But too often, strategy becomes so high-level that it’s useless to the people doing the work. I’ve read beautifully crafted strategies that couldn’t be explained by a single manager.

Here’s my test: If your strategy can’t be explained by someone in the field in 30 seconds, it’s not ready.

Here’s my test: If your strategy can’t be explained by someone in the field in 30 seconds, it’s not ready.

Tactics to align strategy:

Build a strategy-on-a-page. Include mission, goals, key initiatives, and what success looks like.
Use cascading goals. Start with the enterprise, then break it into department, team, and individual priorities.
Hold a strategy rollout workshop. Invite cross-functional reps. Walk through it. Ask, “Where could this break down?”
Assign clear owners to each strategic initiative. No accountability means no execution.

3. Connect Strategy to Planning and Tactics

This is where the rubber meets the road.

Planning turns strategy into structure. It answers:

Who’s doing what?
When will it happen?
What tools do we need to win?

Tactics are the daily plays: the cadences, habits, and communication rhythms that drive execution.

Tactics are the daily plays: the cadences, habits, and communication rhythms that drive execution.

Here’s where most organizations stumble. They build plans for the team, not with them. They deploy tactics that sound good in a meeting but fall apart in real-world conditions.

Tactics to close the gap:

Co-create execution plans with your managers and top performers. Use their input to pressure test assumptions.
Set clear milestones with owners and deadlines. Track progress visibly, whether through dashboards, Gantt charts, or shared docs.
Develop frontline playbooks. These should include key workflows, how-to’s, call scripts, tools, and troubleshooting guides.
Create a weekly operating rhythm. Standups, huddles, and team reviews ensure communication stays tight and aligned.

4. Power It Through People Performance

You can have a great strategy and the world’s best plan. But if your people aren’t aligned, motivated, and coached to succeed, it won’t matter.

Servant leaders understand that results come from building up people, not pushing them harder. Focus on coaching inputs (behaviors), not just chasing outputs (results).

Servant leaders understand that results come from building up people, not pushing them harder. Focus on coaching inputs (behaviors), not just chasing outputs (results).

Training is key. We invested in both skill-based development for our teams, sharpening their craft and in leadership development for our managers. Every leader learned how to give meaningful feedback, drive accountability, and build trust.

When I led 450 employees across 61 locations, we didn’t scale by piling on pressure. We scaled by creating systems that drove clarity, accountability, and engagement.

Here’s what worked:

We created role scorecards with 3 to 5 core expectations per role. Every team member knew what “great” looked like.
We built dashboards that updated weekly and focused on both behaviors and outcomes. Data created visibility, not judgment.
We trained every leader to coach, not just direct. We used frameworks like Start-Stop-Continue and behavior-based feedback.
We normalized feedback. Positive reinforcement, real-time coaching, and regular check-ins were the norm.

That shift led to a 62 percent YoY performance increase. But more importantly, it built a team that wanted to win, together.

The Leadership Checklist That Never Fails Me

Whenever I’m helping an organization turn vision into action, I run through this list:

✅ Is the vision clear, actionable, and tied to daily work?

✅ Is the strategy simple enough to be repeated by every level?

✅ Were the plans created with input from the people doing the work?

✅ Are our tactics pressure-tested in the real world?

✅ Do we have a system for coaching, feedback, and performance?

If the answer to any of those is no, it’s time to reconnect.

Execution Is a Leadership Act

It’s not about micromanaging. It’s about connecting.

Connecting your vision to someone’s why. Your strategy to someone’s what. Your plan to someone’s how. And your performance system to their growth.

Connecting your vision to someone’s why. Your strategy to someone’s what. Your plan to someone’s how. And your performance system to their growth.

That’s how big things get done. That’s how servant leaders win hearts and minds, through clarity, process, and purpose-driven performance. And that’s how teams rise. Not because they were pushed harder, but because they believed deeper, saw clearer, and knew exactly how to get where they were going.

👉 If this resonated, I’d love to have you as a regular reader. Visit my newsletter and hit Subscribe to get future leadership insights straight to your inbox.

💬 And if you’re facing a strategy-to-execution challenge, or want to build a stronger coaching culture, drop a comment or message. Let’s build something meaningful together.