Hace unos meses terminé una sesión con un equipo de ejecutivos comerciales de una institución financiera mediana. Dos días intensos: cómo prospectar, cómo estructurar conversaciones centradas en el cliente, cómo crear valor en cada interacción. El grupo salió inspirado del taller.

Tres semanas después le pregunté a uno de los mejores participantes sobre cómo le había ido aplicando las nuevas herramientas. Me miró un segundo y me dijo, con total honestidad:

“La verdad... la semana siguiente fue igual que siempre, volví al viejo sistema”

El entrenamiento de capacidades es  necesario. Pero sin una cultura comercial que lo sostenga, es un esfuerzo poco  rentable para las empresas.

1.   Las capacidades sin contexto no sobreviven al día a día

Un ejecutivo de ventas puede salir de un taller sabiendo exactamente qué preguntar, cómo estructurar una conversación de valor, cómo posicionarse como asesor estratégico en lugar de vendedor de productos. La semana siguiente, el peso de las métricas de corto plazo, la presión por resultados y las urgencias del día a día terminan arrastrándolos de vuelta a la rutina de siempre.

McKinsey (2024) encontró que más del 70% de las iniciativas de transformación comercial no logran sus objetivos — y la principal causa no es el diseño del programa, sino la falta de condiciones organizacionales para sostener los nuevos comportamientos.

El problema no es el taller. Es lo que existe o no existe en la realidad de la estructura comercial.

2.   El cambio requiere alinear seis pilares

Lo que diferencia a las empresas que realmente transforman su modelo comercial de las que solo capacitan, está relacionado con seis pilares que operan simultáneamente.

1.    Patrocinio de la alta dirección que empodera en lugar de solo exigir

2.    Disciplina en gestión de cuentas/clientes estratégicos, con metodología y seguimiento

3.    Conversaciones centradas en el cliente, no en el portafolio de productos

4.    Cada interacción con relevancia estratégica, preparadapara crear valor medible

5.    Nuevos comportamientos integrados al ritmo operativodiario y la cadencia del negocio

6.    Líderes comerciales presentes que sostienen la cultura, no solo la expresan

Cuando falta uno, los demás no escalan y terminan provocando un círculo vicioso.

3.   El liderazgo que sostiene vale más que el que exige

El patrocinio de la alta dirección y la presencia de los líderes comerciales sonlos pilares que más frecuentemente fallan. No porque los líderes no crean en el cambio, sino porque el día a día los jala de vuelta a revisar resultados, no a construir comportamientos.

Gartner (2024) señala que los equipos comerciales cuyos líderes hacen coaching activo y visible tienen hasta un 28% mayor probabilidad de adoptar nuevos comportamientos de manera sostenida.

El entrenamiento define el rumbo y entrega el mapa; el liderazgo es lo que realmente ayuda a navegar y sostener el cambio.

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Conclusión

Si tu empresa está invirtiendo en transformar la forma en que sus equipos comerciales se relacionan con los clientes, la pregunta ya no es si el entrenamiento funciona. La verdadera pregunta es: ¿qué tan preparada está la organización para sostener el cambio?

Porque el talento existe. Las habilidades se desarrollan. Pero la cultura no se improvisa; se construye todos los días, con liderazgo, alineación y consistencia.

¿Cuál de estos seis pilares es hoy el más débil en tu organización?

In today’s business environment, strategy no longer unfolds neatly from vision to execution. Disruption is constant, complexity is accelerating, and expectations are shifting in real time. In this context, strategy that is overly scripted becomes brittle. The organizations that thrive today are the ones that have learned to improvise. Not reactively, but with intention, agility, and confidence. To many executives, the idea of “strategy improv” might sound risky or chaotic. In truth, great improvisation is neither. It is a learned discipline rooted in presence, trust, and adaptability. It is what enables teams to respond purposefully in the face of the unexpected. And it is quickly becoming a core leadership capability for our times.

Why strategy needs to shift

For decades, the dominant model of strategy has been based on control. A select few defined the vision, cascaded goals through layers of the business, and expected execution to follow. Success was measured by fidelity to the plan. The world no longer works that way. Markets are volatile. We are in a technology super cycle. Customer needs evolve faster than product roadmaps. And the economic, geopolitical, and environmental future is increasingly uncertain. Rigid strategies struggle to survive this level of flux. They become outdated before implementation begins. Worse, they force teams into patterns of execution that ignore emerging data, evolving context, or untapped insight. What is needed now is not more precision. What is needed is more adaptability.

Strategy as intention, not prescription

In improvisational terms, a strategic plan is no longer a fixed script. It is a shared intention. It is a direction, not a destination. It is a compass, not a map. The core strategic question is no longer, “What is our five year plan?” but instead: “How do we respond wisely, quickly, and collectively to whatever emerges in service of our purpose?” This does not mean abandoning structure or discipline. In fact, it demands more of both. But the emphasis shifts from defining every move in advance to cultivating the conditions where people can make smart decisions in the moment. Here is the distinction:

• A goal says: “We will grow 17 percent in revenue.”

• An intention says: “To grow 17 percent, we will delight our clients, grow our impact, and operate with excellence to unlock long term value.”

The first is measurable. The second is both meaningful and measurable. And it is meaning that enables action when the path becomes unclear.

What improv really means

Improv in business is ripe for misunderstanding. It is not winging it or hoping for the best. Great improv is highly disciplined. It is grounded in preparation, presence, and shared principles. Here are a few improv principles that matter most for leaders and teams:

• Yes, And… Build on what is already in motion instead of shutting it down. That is how momentum grows.

• Make Your Partner Look Good. Execution is collective. Leaders who elevate others create trust and shared ownership.

• Be Present. You cannot rely on what worked yesterday or predict what comes tomorrow. Execution happens in this moment.

• Listen for What Is New. Do not just confirm your beliefs. Notice weak signals, dissenting voices, and emerging shifts.

• Commit to the Scene. Once you step in, go all in. Half-hearted execution drains energy and derails progress.

These are not stage tricks. They are everyday disciplines for how leaders and teams show up together when the path is not clear.

The boundary: What can and cannot be improvised

Not everything can or should be improvised. You cannot spin up a new factory in six weeks or redo a regulatory filing on the fly. Capital projects, infrastructure, hiring pipelines, and compliance require structure, discipline, and lead time. Within those guardrails, much of execution is improv. The actions and moves you make can and show flex with the need and the moment. Such moves might include:

• How you respond to a customer this week

• How you redeploy resources when a competitor surprises you

• How you adjust product features in response to early user feedback

The art is knowing the difference. Improv lives inside the boundaries, not outside them. And that is where the advantage lies.

We know it works

We have already seen this in action. During COVID, strategy as improv was not optional. Plans dissolved overnight. Leaders had to pivot in real time, trust their teams, and reimagine value on the fly. Many succeeded, not because they had the perfect plan, but because they had the capacity to improvise. Consider two everyday situations:

• Telecommunications company: With hardware and software tightly linked, this company faced constant tension between short-term changes in a release and the permanence of installed infrastructure. By learning to improvise in the short term with software while anchoring their long-term vision in hardware roadmaps, they delivered quick wins without derailing future value. To do so, leaders had to abandon siloed “hardware first” or “software first” thinking and live in both worlds at once.

• Global manufacturer: Preparing for volatility in regulation and transportation, this company had shifted to thinking of its manufacturing footprint as a portfolio of capabilities rather than fixed plants. When sudden shifts hit sooner than expected, they could improvise quickly, rebalancing capacity across countries, not because they were ready but because they had already rehearsed some of the moves. The adjustments were urgent, but they felt planful.

These are not exotic cases. They are reminders that when strategy execution meets reality, it is the organizations that can improvise with purpose that thrive.

From plans to response

The core strategic question has changed. It is no longer, “What is our five year plan?” but instead: “How do we respond wisely, quickly, and collectively to whatever emerges?” Capacity, creativity, and commitment to the purpose and intention of the strategy, not certainty, are now the keys to competitive advantage. Those attributes are built through people: their judgment, their alignment, and their ability to act in service of shared priorities.

How to build strategic improv into your organization

Improv is not just an individual skill. It is an organizational capacity. Here are five practical ways to embed it into how your teams work:

1. Ground the organization in purpose and priorities. Make sure everyone knows the “why” behind your strategy. Not just the outcomes you are chasing, but the value you aim to create. Purpose creates the throughline that allows teams to improvise without drifting.

1. Build enterprise perspective at all levels. Give people visibility into how their choices affect the whole. When teams understand upstream and downstream impacts, they act with greater confidence and coordination.

1. Normalize adaptation, not perfection. Shift the narrative from flawless execution to responsive evolution. Celebrate learning, reward and highlight intelligent risk taking, and treat change as a constant, not a crisis.

1. Practice collective sensemaking. Create space for cross functional conversation, reflection, and signal sensing. Encourage teams to bring forward what they are noticing, not just what they are reporting.

1. Train for improvisation. Just as improv actors practice, so can your leaders. Build their capacity to navigate ambiguity, connect dots, and co-create solutions in real time. The payoff is not just agility. It is resilience.

Final thought

Strategy execution today is less about control and more about capability. It is less about knowing the answers and more about creating the conditions where your people can discover the right answers for now, together. Companies that thrive in uncertainty will not be the ones with the tightest plans. They will be the ones that can improvise with purpose, with confidence, and with each other. When the world will not wait, improv is not optional. It is the new strategic advantage.

Nearly every leader I talk to knows the old planning model doesn’t make sense anymore. Multi-month cycles. Layers upon layers of initiatives. Budgets that quietly replace strategy as the plan. By the time it’s all done, the competitive landscape has already shifted under their feet. And yet, many companies still do it this way. They can feel the mismatch as they strive to move fast. They just don’t know what to do instead. The old game was setting direction. Decide where to go. Communicate it. Cascade it down. It made sense when the future looked enough like the past that you could be certain of your choices. But certainty is gone. In its place: disruption, surprise, and acceleration. Which means the work of leaders has shifted. The new game is adapting direction.

What needs to be new and different

If strategy execution today is about improv, then strategy setting is no longer about choreography. It requires a more flexible approach. Here are four flaws of traditional strategy planning, and what leaders can do differently:

1. Stop pretending there’s only one future.

We know the future won’t unfold exactly as envisioned. Customer needs shift. Competitors surprise you. Economies wobble. So why do we plan for just one version of what’s next? When one “winning” idea emerges too fast, it often gets momentum without being stress-tested. A better approach:evaluate multiple distinct directions at the same time.  One executive team we worked with had five competing visions for doubling the business in three years. Instead of forcing consensus, we worked with them to think through the core choices for each, including customer focus, product bets, and geographic expansion. Once leaders saw the real implications, they quickly ruled one option out. The eventual plan blended elements of the others, with contingencies built in. Thinking through alternatives gave them confidence and resilience when the inevitable twists came.

2. Make choices real before you announce them

Too many strategic plans race to the declaration moment at the Town Hall: here’s the big idea, now go execute. The problem? Leaders rarely know what they’ve actually signed up for, or what needs to change in how the work gets done. If you believe that strategy execution requires improv, then even in setting strategy you need to imagine what comes next and rehearse moves, implications, and ripple effects across future time horizons, albeit in a simpler but realistic form.  One client we worked with knew that acquisitions were essential to their growth. They had several targets in sight and negotiations underway, but no imminent deal. Instead of waiting, we ran the extended leadership team through a series of acquisition scenarios with different strategic intent that examined variables such as deal size, level of integration, and adjacency of the added business. As they worked through each scenario, they not only got a view into the nature of potential targets but also what changes they, as the leaders of the organization, needed to make now. They were choosing what kind of organization they would become. Based on what they were learning, they were able to make key decisions to position themselves for future success. They agreed on new hiring profiles, streamlined decision processes, leadership shifts, so they’d be ready when the right deal came. Strategy shifted from a conceptual statement to a real, lived preparation for a different future.  

3. Work across time horizons.

People can change fast. Infrastructure and capital cannot. Budgets, board approvals, and physical assets move slowly. Leaders need to intentionally plan for what can change now, what will take time, and what’s locked in, while still identifying the opportunities at each stage.  Take a pharma company with a pipeline bursting with new drug development. If even half their drugs made it through approval, their manufacturing capacity would be insufficient. Together we built an adaptable manufacturing plan, anchored on essentials, with clear trigger points for future decisions. When 70% of the drugs cleared approval, they were ready. Without that horizon-based thinking, they would have been caught flat-footed.

4. Align at the right level of detail.

Here’s a trap: mistaking varied interpretation of the strategy for purposeful improvisation. They are not the same. Without clarity and alignment at the top, every leader fills in gaps differently. That isn’t agility, it’s chaos. Leaders must turn the conceptual strategy into something tangible and real, in order to be able to align and lead the organization in the same direction. Strategic modeling allows leaders to test choices at the right level of fidelity, so they know what they’re actually agreeing to. Growing “a lot” versus growing 37% are not the same thing. The detail that is uncovered in the modeling exercises provides enough clarity to shape coherent execution, while still leaving room for adaptive moves over time.

From map to compass

Old strategy setting was about certainty. New strategy setting is about clarity of intent and readiness to adapt. It’s less a map and more of a compass. If your strategy and planning process still looks like a marathon toward a finished plan, ask yourself: are you preparing for the world you wish you had, or the one you actually face? The trick is helping leadership teams shift from setting direction to adapting direction—so strategy setting and execution can adapt. The future won’t wait for your plans.

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