This is part two of our Agile leadership blog series. If you missed part one, “What Even Is Agile Leadership,” check it out here.

Corporate strategies rarely fail on paper. They fail in execution when culture and reality collide. 

Senior leaders read the blogs, know what’s happening in the zeitgeist, study Harvard Business Review, etc. They are real people, just like you!  But when faced with the immovable object known as “culture,” none of it matters. How do you lead with Agility in the face of years, or even decades of “this is how we do, so deal with it.” 

For the leader tasked with executing strategy, this poses an even more intractable problem, especially when corporate values often include Agility… but really mean poor management practices disguised as Agility. 

What is an Agile-minded leader to do?  

The first move is accepting that Agility isn’t just a vibe. It’s a discipline; it is discipline. An Agile-minded leader doesn’t wait for the culture to magically shift like some corporate weather pattern. They start with the smallest unit they actually control: their own behavior, their own team, and the choices they make every day. 

Real Agility in strategy execution comes from four things: 

1. Shrinking the work. 

Not everything needs a steering committee, a six-month roadmap, and a ceremonial kickoff. Break strategy into bite-sized moves, identify cheap ways to start, run small tests. Put something into production that teaches you and the organization something, anything.  

When you show your team and peers that progress is possible without bureaucracy, people pay attention. 

2. Making learning visible. 

Executives say they love transparency, but what they actually love is being pleasantly surprised when things work out better than expected.  

Agile-minded leaders flip that dynamic by showing their work. They show the data. They show the decisions they made and the ones they reversed; not at the end, but throughout the process. When learning becomes normal instead of suspicious, suddenly “culture” feels malleable and manageable. 

3. Creating safety without waiting for permission. 

You don’t need a culture overhaul (more on that in another blog) to model a healthier way of working. Reward experiments, even the ones that fail. Celebrate when someone invalidates a bad assumption early. Show people what it looks like to take risks without punishment attached.  

This is how teams start believing Agility is real and workable. 

4. Ruthlessly tying the work to value. 

Agile-minded leaders don’t confuse activity with progress. They know strategy execution only matters if it moves something that matters: customer outcomes, revenue, risk reduction, experience, whatever the business actually cares about.  

They build a habit of asking: Why are we doing this? Why now? How does this help someone? How does this change the business? When teams see that work is connected to real impact, they get sharper and more engaged with the work. Prioritization becomes easier. Tradeoffs become clearer. Suddenly, “Agility” stops being an abstract philosophy and becomes an engine for value. 

Eventually something shifts. People notice that the team doing the quiet, disciplined, iterative work is delivering results. They start asking questions. They get curious. They want in.  That’s the moment you’ve been working toward. 

Leading strategy execution with Agility isn’t about convincing everyone to suddenly behave differently. It’s about proving a different way is possible, making it irresistible, and then being available to help spread the goodness around where it matters most. 

That’s what an Agile-minded leader does: they make the future easier to reach than the past is to cling to. 

Looking for training that grows your skills as an Agile leader? Check out Certified Agile Leader (CAL 1) training.