Why strong strategy fails without a strong leadership team
Forming the most important leadership team of the country
In the Netherlands, several political parties that won the recent elections are currently forming a new government. They are negotiating what they want to achieve together. In effect, they are building the most important leadership team in the country.
The uncomfortable reality is that, looking back at previous cabinets, we would have intervened if this had been the executive team of an organization: distrust, poor collaboration, and destructive behaviour under pressure.
The new formation is therefore an opportunity to get it right. The challenge is not just to agree on policy, but to build a team capable of alignment under pressure, fast decision-making when trade-offs hurt, and collaboration when trust is tested.
Most executive teams never get the luxury of a formal “formation” phase.
Roles are assigned, strategies are approved, and the team is expected to function immediately, often without ever making explicit how it will operate under pressure.
What you are about to read is an essay that examines cabinet formation through a leadership lens. I’m sharing it here because the lessons apply just as much to boards and executive teams everywhere.
There is also a Dutch version of the article.
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Building a strong leadership team at the top
The cabinet formation is often approached as an ideological and political chess game. Who gets which portfolio? Which positions prevail? Which compromises are acceptable?
These are understandable questions. But they miss a more fundamental point: a substantive coalition agreement is no guarantee that a cabinet will remain cohesive and govern effectively under pressure.
What is required is deliberate attention for teaming at the top. Because if the past years have shown us anything, it is this:
Many cabinets behaved like a weak executive team.
This article is a reflection on how you govern together, based on what I see in well-functioning executive and leadership teams.
1. Make clear choices
If there is one thing the next cabinet must do to improve the country, it is to make real choices.
Election programmes are wish lists. They show what parties care about. But leadership starts where you dare to choose. Not everything is possible.
To improve the country, painful choices are inevitable. Strong leadership teams make those choices explicit. They not only say what they will do, but also what they will not do. And why.
A powerful way to make this concrete is to formulate choices in the form of:
X even over Y
For example:
Long-term solutions even over Short-term popularity
More housing even over Better healthcare
Feasibility even over Political consensus
Even over statements force clarity. They make the underlying principle explicit, while leaving room for later elaboration. In other words: do not lock everything into a detailed coalition agreement, but be crystal clear about the choices you make.
And perhaps most importantly, principles like these help build public trust in politics because it becomes clear what the team is willing to sacrifice to achieve its goals.
2. Agree on how you act under pressure
This raises an obvious question: if leadership is about making choices, why does it so often fail in practice? How is it possible that cabinets fall apart precisely when things get difficult?
During election campaigns, individual positions are sharpened to the maximum. Parties differentiate themselves and position themselves against others. That is logical. But this behaviour is often unconsciously carried into the coalition phase.
Under pressure, a cabinet’s behaviour quickly shifts from collaboration to survival:
speaking through the media instead of with each other
individual interests remain visibly dominant
the national interest becomes subordinate to party interests
To prevent this, coalition agreements are increasingly tightened. They function as a kind of peace agreement until the next election: a document designed primarily to prevent conflict along the way.
That works, until reality changes. And it always does.
Then it turns out that the agreement provided clarity about what was planned, but hardly any guidance on how to behave when there is disagreement.
In organizations, I see exactly the same pattern: teams that do not truly trust each other try to manage uncertainty through rules, procedures, and tightly scripted plans. This creates an illusion of certainty, but makes collaboration fragile.
Strong leadership teams, therefore, do not focus only on content, but also on explicit working agreements. For example:
How do we make decisions when we disagree?
How do we communicate externally when tensions arise?
How do we give each other feedback, even when it is uncomfortable?
What are the consequences if someone consistently violates these agreements?
These kinds of agreements may sound soft. In practice, they are essential to maintain pace, trust, and stability. Without them, there is free rein for friction; and in a political system, friction is mercilessly amplified.
3. Create a personal user manual
One of the most powerful yet underused interventions in teams is the personal user manual.
Team members articulate their own manual, briefly and concretely:
What motivates you?
What triggers you?
How do you behave under pressure?
How do you prefer to receive feedback?
What should others definitely do and not do to work well with you?
Discussing these manuals significantly accelerates team development. It prevents us from telling stories about each other instead of talking with each other.
In a cabinet where ego and media attention play major roles, this is not a luxury. It is a prerequisite. Without this conversation, differences become personal. And once things become personal, they quickly become political.
4. Adopt a rhythm for continuous improvement
What strikes me in many cabinets is that they meet frequently, but rarely reflect in a structured way on the collaboration itself.
Strong teams deliberately build a fixed rhythm for this.
For example:
Explicitly reflecting on the collaboration on a monthly basis
Discussing what is working and what is causing friction
Revisiting working agreements as the context changes
Not as an after-the-fact evaluation, but as ongoing maintenance of the system.
Without this rhythm, tensions accumulate. Then a single incident can quickly escalate into a breaking point.
Conclusion
If a new cabinet only focuses on content and skips teaming, it will repeat the pattern of recent years. By investing in team development, you can increase the likelihood of a stable team, faster, better decision-making, and greater trust.
A note for executive teams
The questions raised here are the same ones every leadership team eventually faces: How do we make real choices? How do we behave when pressure rises? How do we repair trust when it erodes? And how do we keep learning as a team while the organisation depends on us?
Governments make these dynamics visible because the stakes are public. In organisations, the stakes are no less real, only less visible.
If this article resonated, it may be worth asking not whether your strategy is strong enough, but whether your leadership team is.
Below is another article that describes an exercise that can help your team accelerate:
Let us know if you need any help. At Unblock, we facilitate high-impact leadership off-sites and summits.
That’s it. I hope you enjoyed it. Simply hit ‘reply’ or comment. I read every message. Wishing you the best for the upcoming year!
