The layer below the executive is where a plan is turned into decisions, and it is the layer least often read.
Why it matters when the plan changes
Executive teams set direction; the layer below them runs the units, owns the interfaces and makes the daily trade-offs a plan actually consists of. This is where the dependencies a strategy relies on, the handoffs, sequencing and cross-unit commitments, are made and kept. Research on strategy execution found that only nine per cent of managers say they can rely on colleagues in other functions and units all the time. That layer also contains the succession pool, so a gap in it is both an execution risk now and a pipeline risk later.
The tension is access and cost. Assessing a top team is a contained exercise; the layer below can be fifty or two hundred people, and reading all of them is expensive and intrusive. Most managers do not believe stated priorities are resourced, so the useful version is selective: the roles a specific plan depends on, usually a fraction of the layer and almost never the whole of it.
In practice
A transformation is approved with a well-assessed executive team behind it. Delivery depends on nine business-unit leaders who were never looked at. Three of them are carrying roles the new model changed substantially. The programme reports green for two quarters on the strength of executive commitment and then slips at the level where the work sits.
Evidence
Cross-unit commitments are the least reliable part of execution, and those commitments are made and kept at the layer below the executive.
Donald Sull, Rebecca Homkes and Charles Sull, Why Strategy Execution Unravels and What to Do About It, Harvard Business Review (2015)Most managers do not believe stated strategic priorities are resourced, and it is this layer that experiences the shortfall first.
Donald Sull, Rebecca Homkes and Charles Sull, Why Strategy Execution Unravels and What to Do About It, Harvard Business Review (2015)
What it cannot tell you
Second-layer assessment reads whether specific roles can carry a specific plan; it does not diagnose why an executive team set that plan, nor whether the strategy itself is sound. It is silent on layers above and below the one examined, and a clean reading here cannot compensate for direction that is wrong at the top.
Questions
Cost, access and habit. Assessment budgets concentrate on the most senior roles, and organisations assume a strong executive team implies a capable layer beneath it. Harvard Business Review research on strategy execution found only nine per cent of managers can rely on colleagues in other units all the time, the assumption worth testing.
The roles this specific plan depends on, which is usually a small minority of the layer. Reading everyone is expensive and produces a talent inventory rather than an answer about the plan. Selecting by dependency rather than by seniority is what keeps the exercise proportionate.
Unowned interfaces between units, decisions the new structure moved without anyone noticing, and roles whose content changed while the title did not. Those are execution findings rather than people findings, and they are usually cheaper to fix than anything at executive level.
Directly. This layer is the pool the executive team is drawn from, so a gap here is both an execution risk now and a pipeline risk later. A 2015 Harvard Business Review study found only eleven per cent of managers believe stated priorities are fully resourced, a shortfall this pool absorbs first.
No. A talent review places people against a general standard and produces a grid. This reads specific roles against what a specific plan will demand of them, which produces findings about the arrangement around those roles rather than a ranking of the individuals in them.