Your executive team doesn’t have a strategy problem – they have a time problem

To our surprise, the Three Horizons Framework was not just a helpful model to explore strategic alignment. It also suddenly made visible to the team how their team dynamics and conversations were getting in the way of enabling transformation in the wider organization. 

The framework made three things visible for the executive team: 

1. Where their time was really going
   
   

2. How effective their conversations were in each horizon  –  and why  
   
   

3. Where their relational tensions spike and the impact of that on strategic execution 

When we explored the team dynamics in more detail, we learned that the CEO – having grown up from operations – had a very short-term, problem-solving approach to team conversations. The more disruption they experienced in key markets and customer needs, the more the team accelerated its short-term focus. We also realized that many of the strategic planning processes were locked in a Horizon 1 focused way of working.  

We kicked off a research project with 11 organizations exploring how teams balance strategic conversations across time horizons before validating the results with over 150 top team executives.  

In our interviews, executives consistently perceived an imbalance in their temporal focus. On average, they wanted to shift nearly 30% of leadership meeting time from managing present concerns (Horizon 1) to co-creating future aspirations (Horizon 3 + Horizon 2), and they rated their H3 and H2 conversations as markedly less effective than their H1 conversations. 

Successful executive teams seemed to realize that strategy is not just the decisions and actions you take, but what you actually talk about. 

• What gets discussed repeatedly becomes resourced. 

• What gets scheduled becomes shaped. 

• What never gets discussed never gets built. 

One executive put it bluntly: “This is not a competence or willpower issue. It’s a structural issue. Most executive team practices have been designed to optimize performance today, not to create transformation tomorrow.” 

Everyone agrees the future matters, but no one has the time to build it. 

Most executive teams could articulate their purpose and vision in terms of high-level strategic narratives. But they hadn’t all developed a shared understanding of the implications of that for their operating model. 

This shows up as a delivery challenge in Horizon 2, where the future becomes real. 

Horizon 2 where an organization must: 

• Reallocate resources (people, time, money) away from today 

• Invest in initiatives that don’t yet perform 

• Redesign governance, roles and capabilities 

• Face uncertainty and certainty directly 

Horizon 2 is the bridge between aspiration and execution, and in many executive teams, the bridge is missing.  

As one manufacturing executive told me, with genuine surprise: “No one owns or coordinates the delivery of H2 in our leadership team… it’s amazing. We push it down the hierarchy.” 

That one sentence captures why so many transformations stall. Because when nobody owns the bridge, the executive team often do not hold each other to account to deliver cross-functional change initiatives. Transformation becomes an illusion: lots of vision and urgency, but no clear pathway.  

Horizon 3 without Horizon 2 is just hope. 

To operate here, leaders must confront difficult decisions that reshape power and identity, both personal and organizational. 

• Which business units lose funding? 

• Which functions become more and less powerful? 

• How do we allocate top performers to future growth initiatives rather than just supporting our most profitable business? 

• What has to be stopped to build what’s next? 

It’s no surprise that executive teams often retreat to Horizon 1. This is where people feel competent and safe, performance is measurable, and control is tangible.  

By contrast, Horizon 2 and 3 conversations demand the ability to hold complexity and risk together, without collapsing into defensiveness or politics. 

As one oil and gas CEO described it: “There’s an incredible amount of potential in organizations to innovate, but it puts so much tension on leadership teams. That requires the ability to hold complexity, and there are political power choices.” 

This is why the biggest barrier to future-making is rarely strategic intelligence, but relational intelligence: 

• If it isn’t safe for leaders to not know, they won’t explore and engage. 

• If it isn’t safe for people to challenge power, leaders won’t reallocate resources. 

• If it isn’t safe to question purpose and identity, teams won’t transform. 

One of the most revealing findings was this: executives often assumed trust was “high” in their leadership team – but when Horizons 2 and 3 were introduced, they discovered trust was horizon-specific.  

Trust in operational execution does not automatically translate to trust in future-facing conversations or transformation initiatives. 

Teams who can balance strategic conversations across each time horizon are what we call ambidextrous.  

In our research, six enablers appeared. Importantly, all of these enablers are interdependent. This isn’t a “single fix” problem. The teams that enabled transformation worked on the six enablers together. 

1. Recruit and develop ambidextrous leaders: Leaders need the ability to operate in multiple horizons – not just Horizon 1 execution.  
   
   

2. Develop ambidextrous team practices: The team must be able to hold conflict, inquiry, accountability, and collaboration in each horizon. This requires different meetings with different approaches. 
   
   

3. Develop horizon-fit strategic methods: Most strategy processes are designed for Horizon 1 planning – budgets, KPIs, annual cycles. Horizons 2 and 3 require transformation specific approaches, methods and practices.  
   
   

4. Connect strategy and organization development: Engage senior leaders in developing your transformation pathway before you are clear. Develop shared understanding of future operating models, with clear ownership, resources, incentives, and learning governance for Horizons 2 and 3.  
   
   

5. Engage your external systems: Transformation cannot be solved internally. Teams need systematic external engagement with customers, partners, and regulators. This was the biggest source of transformational energy in the companies we researched.  
   
   

6. Develop robust relational dynamics: What all of the above enablers require is for executive team members to surface and address the hidden tensions in each horizon by developing trust and shared purpose.  

If there is one conclusion for C-suite leaders, it is this: transformation isn’t primarily a strategy challenge; it’s a temporal challenge.  

Ambidextrous leadership is the capability to see across time horizons, shift the system to create space for transformative conversations in each horizon, and sustain alignment – ultimately producing strategic outcomes.