Perfect Execution Before Judging Strategy
Diagnose people/process first, and only re-evaluate strategy once execution is perfect.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 90%
A diagnostic for failing projects. First distinguish whether the issue is strategy/execution or people/process — Gleit estimates 80% of the time it's people or process (wrong people, or the right people with the wrong way of working together). Then insist on perfect execution before re-evaluating strategy, because only clean execution lets you learn whether the strategy itself was right or wrong.
Origin
Gleit's 'Naomi-isms', drawn from her project-turnaround work at Meta.
Core principles
- 01Most project failures are people/process problems, not strategy problems
- 02'Wrong process' can mean the right people working together badly
- 03You cannot learn from a failure that was imperfectly executed
- 04Perfect execution is a prerequisite for any strategy verdict
How to run it
- 1
Diagnose the failure type
Determine whether the problem is a strategy/execution issue or a people/process issue. Assume people/process first — it's the cause ~80% of the time.
Pro tip People/process failures split into 'wrong people' and 'right people, wrong way of working together.'
- 2
Fix people and process
Get the right people on the project and establish the right process by which they work together before touching strategy.
- 3
Drive to perfect execution
Insist the project executes perfectly, so that any outcome is attributable to strategy rather than sloppy execution.
Watch out Imperfect execution is the worst of all worlds — if the project fails you can't tell whether the strategy or the execution was to blame.
- 4
Only then re-evaluate strategy
With execution clean, judge the strategy. Best case: right strategy, perfectly executed. Next best: wrong strategy but perfectly executed — because now you've learned it was wrong and can revamp and retry.
Pro tip A cleanly-executed failure is valuable: it definitively tells you the strategy was wrong.
In the wild
Gleit describes a project that is imperfectly executing: at the end it might fail, but no one can tell whether the strategy was wrong or the execution was poor.
→ By forcing perfect execution first, a failure becomes a clear signal to revamp the strategy and try again.
Common mistakes
Rewriting strategy over an execution problem
Teams re-litigate strategy when the real issue is people or process; changing strategy on top of sloppy execution just adds noise.
Is it for you?
Best for
Leaders and PMs brought in to turn around a struggling or ambiguous project
Not ideal for
Cases where the strategy is demonstrably and fundamentally flawed from the outset, making execution investment wasteful
From the transcript
“I would say 80% of the time I think it's a people or a process issue”
“I first try to tackle those or in general I think it's really important to have perfect execution I want to make sure a project…”
“The ideal case is the strategy was right and you perfectly executed on it the next best case scenario is the strategy was wrong but…”
From the episode
Meta’s Head of Product (and 29th employee) on working with Mark Zuckerberg, early growth tactics, why PMs are like conductors, and more
Naomi Gleit