By Leslie Ellis, Founder & CEO, Meaningful Change Consulting
The question isn’t “Do we have the right strategy?”
It’s “Do our leaders have the capability to make any strategy work?”
For too long, organizations have treated strategy as the crown jewel — the thing to perfect, polish, and present — while assuming leadership capability will naturally rise to meet it. But that assumption is cracking. Strategy is outpacing skill. Transformation plans are outstripping leadership depth. Change fatigue is eroding even the most carefully crafted visions.
Here’s the truth: the next wave of competitive advantage won’t come from better strategies — it’ll come from better leaders.
The Missing Readiness Check
Before every major transformation, we assess financial readiness, technical readiness, and market readiness.
But almost no one assesses leadership readiness — the ability of executives to coach others through change, not just manage it.
Organizations assume the same leaders who built success under old conditions will know how to lead through disruption and ambiguity. That’s like assuming a pilot trained for clear skies will instinctively know how to fly through a storm.
The result? Brilliant strategies stumble in execution because leaders revert to control instead of coaching, speed instead of clarity, and compliance instead of alignment.
Strategy-First, Capability-Second: The Most Expensive Pattern in Business
I’ve spent two decades rescuing change efforts that were 60% complete but already 40% off-track. The pattern never changes:
- The strategy is solid.
- The project plan is airtight.
- The leadership capability is assumed.
And yet, rework, misalignment, and disengagement drain time and money faster than anyone expects.
When we design ahead of the causes of rework — building leadership capability into the plan instead of treating it as an afterthought — the results shift dramatically. I’ve seen first-year transformation projects come in 40% under budget simply because we strengthened the leadership layer before execution began.
That’s not luck. It’s design. It’s what happens when capability becomes part of the business case, not a side conversation.
What “Leadership Capability” Really Means
Leadership capability isn’t about charisma, confidence, or knowing every answer.
It’s about the ability to:
It’s about the ability to:
- Coach through uncertainty instead of trying to control it.
- Model adaptability when the playbook shifts mid-flight.
- Align across layers — not just direct reports, but peers, sponsors, and the broader organization.
- Build Strategic Tension™ — naming the gap between current reality and the future to create clarity and urgency.
- Foster Reinvention — letting go of what once worked to make space for what’s next.
In short, leadership capability is the bridge between intent and impact. And that bridge doesn’t build itself.
The Coaching Imperative
Executive coaching is no longer a perk — it’s an operational necessity.
In a change-constant world, leaders aren’t failing for lack of intelligence or commitment. They’re failing for lack of practice. Coaching builds the muscle memory leaders need to make confident decisions in motion, engage teams in uncertainty, and sustain momentum when conditions shift mid-course.
When organizations invest here, they don’t just develop better leaders — they reduce rework, retain talent, and realize strategy faster.
The ROI isn’t only financial. It’s cultural. Coaching builds an organization capable of change, not just one that survives it.
The Wake-Up Call for 2026
As we head into 2026, the leadership capability crisis isn’t coming — it’s here.
Strategy will always matter. But it’s no longer enough to ask, “Do we have the right plan?”
The better question — the one that separates organizations that thrive from those that stall — is this:
Do we have leaders capable of turning any strategy into success?
If the answer is “not yet,” that’s not failure. It’s an opportunity.
Because the organizations that will win the next decade won’t just design strategy.
They’ll design capability.
About the Author
Leslie Ellis helps Fortune 500 executives deliver sustainable transformation — without wasting millions on rework. As the founder of Meaningful Change Consulting, she’s known for helping leaders raise the probability of success in complex change efforts by building alignment, trust, and capability into every phase of transformation.
