It's common for leaders to wonder if their top team members whose numbers could range anywhere from 10 to 300 people, are onboard with a new strategy.

Execution is about bringing a strategy to life and making it happen both in the marketplace and within the organization. Winning in the marketplace is about executing better and faster than rivals and is more likely to occur when the organization is energized, engaged and committed to strategy execution.

Bringing a strategy to life requires leadership up and down the organization. Leaders must know how to translate strategy into action programs; how to coordinate these programs over time; how to learn from the results and adapt the action programs accordingly. Action programs must be translated into sequences of tasks to be accomplished in specific time frames, with agreed upon milestones, and trigger points.

However, what leaders at the top of the organization see as strategy, people down the organization may see only as goals and perhaps not even the right goals and therefore not relevant to what they do. They may even opt out of "owning" the process of executing any actions.

Execution requires that leaders translate the strategy into action programs that inspire and motivate all relevant teams, functional units and groups. It requires articulating the rationale for the strategy in ways that are meaningful to each organizational unit.