We can spend six months, sometimes a year, developing a strategy. We look at the data, debate priorities, consult across the organization, decide where we want to go, and eventually align around a North Star. However, we don’t get to execute that strategy in a controlled environment. 

A key leader leaves, an acquisition exposes gaps between functions, technology changes the way work gets done, or AI forces us to make decisions before we have all the answers. When things don’t go according to plan, how prepared is your team to respond?

Professional sports gives us a lot to think about when it comes to that question. Andrew Johnson, founder and CEO of Iron Strategy Labs, has advised boards and executive teams for more than 20 years and has worked across technology, education, strategy, and organizational performance. 

In his book, Iron Sharpens Iron: How Borrowing from the Pro Sports Playbook Can Give Businesses the Winning Edge, Andrew looks at business performance through a sporting lens. Professional teams make the standards clear, practice before game day, coach constantly, review performance, recover, and prepare to do it again.

Andrew’s perspective gives experienced leaders navigating growth, transformation, AI disruption, and increasing complexity three practical areas to examine: how we turn strategy into a playbook our teams can use, how we build systems that help us make good decisions faster, and how feedback, coaching, and recovery support high performance.

A Strategy Needs a Playbook

Most executive teams enjoy the strategy development part. We get to look ahead, decide where we want to go, and determine how we plan to win. However, once we finish the strategy, our teams still need to know how to execute it. In Andrew’s sports analogy, the scheme and philosophy establish the North Star, while the playbook translates that direction into what people actually do.

“Strategy on a piece of paper, separate to the execution, doesn’t deliver anything.” — Andrew Johnson

A useful playbook starts with standards, preparation, and clarity about roles. When someone joins our team, they need to understand what we expect, what success looks like, and which processes support the work. Otherwise, twelve months can pass before a performance conversation reveals that the leader and team member have been working from two different definitions of success.

 Andrew identifies standards, preparation, and a playbook as three fundamental building blocks because they give teams something concrete to work from rather than expecting everyone to figure it out along the way.

As our organizations grow, technology stacks, processes, and ways of working build up over years, and the handoffs among people, processes, data, and technology can create friction. AI adds another layer because it touches many of those same systems. Andrew’s advice gets very practical: map where teams hand off data, people, processes, and services; look at where decisions happen across divisions; then examine where we can reduce complexity while improving the customer experience.

That work also includes capturing the knowledge that lives in our teams. In one of his examples, a long-tenured IT professional left a small organization, and the company later changed its content management system. The printer went down because nobody knew the print server sat on the same server box. The employee had carried that knowledge in his head, and the organization felt the pain after he left.

I could relate to that immediately because, during my corporate career, I coordinated disaster recovery and business continuity planning across divisions. We created plans for situations that could interrupt our ability to operate, and years after I left, COVID happened. I was so happy to hear that those plans worked. We had no idea a pandemic was coming when we created them; we knew the business needed a way to keep operating when something disrupted the normal way we worked.

Systems Design Is a Leadership Capability

One of Andrew’s strongest points for senior leaders is that systems design belongs in the leadership conversation. We often focus on executive presence, communication, influence, and inspiring our teams, while other people handle the systems. However, leaders still have to make sure those systems set our teams up for success. With AI changing the playing field so quickly, Andrew puts systems design alongside complex decision making as two leadership capabilities that deserve our attention.

Systems also affect how quickly we can make decisions. In a complex environment, we will not have all the information we want, and we cannot wait for 100 percent certainty. We need to understand the risk, the potential upside, the impact of the decision, and, most importantly, the problem we’re trying to solve. Trying to make the perfect decision can put us into indecision, so we have to make the best decision we can with the information we have at that moment.

AI brings that challenge right into the executive room. Boards and leadership teams have to determine who owns AI decision making and governance, and those of us in financial services and other highly regulated industries know that some decisions carry risks we cannot afford to get wrong. Rather than beginning with a long list of AI use cases, Andrew starts with a more useful question: Where can AI help us make good decisions faster?

That question keeps us focused on the business. Where does information get stuck? Which processes take longer than they should? Where do handoffs between functions create friction? Once we understand those problems, we can decide where AI can help rather than searching for somewhere to use the technology.

McKinsey’s June 2026 research reinforces how difficult execution can become. Only 30 percent of transformations deliver the value leaders expect, and McKinsey found that internal collective-action problems can undermine execution even when leaders share the same goal. Their research also found that the most successful transformations involve at least 20% – 30% of the organization, compared with an average of only 2%.

What Professional Sports Gets Right About Performance

Professional sports also gives us a useful model for feedback and coaching. Players don’t wait until the end of the season to find out how they’re doing. They receive feedback throughout the game, review the tape, practice what needs work, and prepare for the next game. Feedback comes close enough to the performance that they can actually use it.

When we wait months to address something that needs attention, we lose valuable time that someone could have used to improve. Clear standards tell our teams what success looks like, while feedback and coaching help them improve while the work is happening.

The title Iron Sharpens Iron comes from another part of that sporting environment. Highly skilled players practice against one another and expose weaknesses to people they trust so they can strengthen those areas. Even in the NFL, where a roster can shrink from 90 players to 53, players still need coaches and teammates who help them develop.

That connects naturally to having a safe place to land as leaders. Throughout my leadership career, mentors and sponsors gave me people I could trust enough to be vulnerable about a challenge, work through something I had not figured out yet, and get another perspective. As our responsibilities grow, we may not always have someone inside our company or on our board with whom we can share everything, so a trusted mentor, sponsor, advisor, or coach can give us that space.

Recovery matters, too. Professional sports teams don’t expect athletes to go harder and faster indefinitely. They rest, recover, adjust their routines depending on where they are in the season, and prepare for the next game. Andrew’s younger self liked going a hundred miles an hour and working long hours because it was fun. Over time, he learned that working harder didn’t necessarily optimize the result; putting the systems and foundations in place and creating an environment where everyone can succeed together matters more.

“Separation comes from preparation.” — Andrew Johnson

Preparation means considering the variables that could emerge, getting our reps in, practicing what we plan to do, and getting ready to execute when the pressure is on. And we can’t separate that preparation from recovery. As Andrew put it, going harder and faster and expecting endurance to carry us “doesn’t make sense.” To perform at the highest level, we also have to rest, recover, and get ready for what’s next.

What’s Next?

Andrew’s sports lens brings strategy, systems, and performance together in a practical way. A playbook helps our teams execute the strategy, good systems reduce unnecessary complexity and support better decisions, and feedback, coaching, preparation, and recovery help us sustain performance. 

As you look at how your organization operates today, what would you strengthen in your leadership playbook to help your team execute when the pressure is on?

If what we explored here connects with what you’re experiencing in your organization, let’s have a Strategy Conversation about your strategy, systems, and team performance and where you see opportunities to strengthen them: Complimentary Discovery Session.

And if you’re navigating AI transformation, I’d be happy to share a complimentary copy of The Continuous Elevation™ Report 2026: The Human Side of AI Transformation. The report explores six insights and four actions leaders can take to address the human side of AI transformation and create greater business value. Email me at info@executivebound.com, and I’ll be happy to send you a copy.

To hear more of Andrew’s perspective on what business leaders can learn from professional sports, watch or listen to the full episode of The Dr. Ginny Show. And if you would like to learn more about Andrew’s work and Iron Sharpens Iron, I encourage you to connect with him using the information below.

Found this article valuable? Share it with others in your leadership network. And if you’re not already a member of our free ExecutiveBound Inner Circle community, join us here for practical elevation skills, leadership insights, and resources to support your Continuous Elevation™.

Lead with purpose, live with joy!

Dr. Ginny

About Our Distinguished Guest

Andrew Johnson is the founder and CEO of Iron Strategy Labs and a business strategy expert with more than 20 years of experience advising boards and executive teams. His background spans technology, education, strategy, and organizational performance. He is the author of Iron Sharpens Iron: How Borrowing from the Pro Sports Playbook Can Give Businesses the Winning Edge. To connect with Andrew, visit ironstrategylabs.com or connect with him on LinkedIn.