Move

How many times has your organization launched an exciting new initiative—only for it to fade a few months later? In MOVE: How Decisive Leaders Execute Strategy Despite Obstacles, Setbacks, and Stalls, business leader Patty Azzarello tackles this all-too-common leadership failure head-on. She argues that the real problem with execution isn’t weak strategy—it’s the inability to sustain momentum through what she calls the Middle, that long, messy stretch between the thrill of planning and the triumph of results.

Azzarello draws from her own experience leading billion-dollar companies and transforming dysfunctional teams to offer a clear, practical model for leaders who want to make strategy stick. Her essential premise: you can craft an inspiring vision and declare bold goals, but until you execute relentlessly through the Middle, you haven’t achieved anything. The gap between intention and outcome, between talking and doing, is where most transformations die.

The MOVE Model

At the heart of Azzarello’s book lies the MOVE model—a four-part framework for securing lasting business transformation: M for Middle, O for Organization, V for Valor, and E for Everyone. Each element defines a distinct leadership challenge and mindset you must cultivate to make strategy real:

• M: The Middle—Define concrete outcomes, metrics, and timelines so you can sustain progress beyond the initial launch.
• O: Organization—Build the right team and structure to carry your ambitious strategy forward.
• V: Valor—Lead with persistence, courage, and integrity, especially when resistance and setbacks hit.
• E: Everyone—Shift from top-down command to organization-wide conversation, so that belief, motivation, and peer accountability keep the initiative alive.

This progression captures a universal truth: vision and strategy depend on executional discipline and cultural ownership. Azzarello repeatedly reminds readers, “You can lead a transformation from the top, but you can’t do a transformation from the top.” Sustainable change requires everyone’s understanding, belief, and daily action.

Why the Middle Is the Danger Zone

Leaders love big ideas and fresh beginnings. But in the long slog of execution—what Azzarello calls the Middle—motivation wanes, priorities blur, and the day-to-day grind takes over. Azzarello likens it to signing up for a gym membership full of enthusiasm, then never showing up after the first week. The Middle is the abyss between excitement and exhaustion. This is where good intentions stall, and where most strategies die of neglect rather than bad design.

The antidote is to make the Middle visible and measurable. Leaders must avoid dumping aspirational goals (“become the market leader”) on their teams and instead define specific milestones, control points, and timelines. For example, one of her clients broke a vague goal like “sell higher in the organization” into actions: identify target accounts within one month, train reps within two months, and secure ten new executive relationships by quarter’s end. By turning intentions into concrete checkpoints, you give the organization visible signs of progress and restore belief.

Execution Is a Leadership Act

Azzarello’s central argument challenges a pervasive myth: that “execution is beneath leaders.” Too many executives think their job ends once they announce direction. She insists that if you’re not actively managing execution—clarifying outcomes, enforcing consequences, moving resources—you’re not leading at all. Execution is not micromanagement; it’s leadership by focus and follow-through. This echoes Peter Drucker’s belief that “what gets measured gets managed,” though Azzarello adds a crucial dimension: what gets discussed gets done.

The Stakes: Strategy Without Execution = Talking

Throughout the book, Azzarello hammers home her opening line: strategic failure often comes down to the gap between decision and delivery. Transformations stall when leaders avoid conflict, skip resource reallocations, or fail to maintain accountability once deadlines slip. In one story, she describes executives who missed key dates and then acted like nothing happened—an error she calls “not addressing the miss.” The cost of silence is cultural: when nothing happens after a failure, everyone learns that deadlines don’t matter, and motivation collapses.

Her cure is a blend of systems and psychology. Build habits of visible tracking, regular check-ins, and consequences that restore credibility. Develop “ruthless priorities” so that routine fires don’t derail strategic work. And cultivate Valor—the steadiness to keep steering through the long Middle without yielding to fear, fatigue, or doubt. By embedding discipline into conversation and culture, leaders shift from strategic tourism (“we talked about that once”) to organizational movement.

Beyond the Model: Culture and Human Connection

Later chapters expand the model’s human side. Azzarello’s message is not about spreadsheets or checklists—it’s about people. She shows that transformation thrives on trust, consistency, and meaning. In chapters like “Getting People to Actually Care,” “Listen on Purpose,” and “Power and Trust,” she ties execution back to emotion: people move mountains when they feel respected, included, and confident that their contributions matter. Drawing from psychology and her own leadership stories, Azzarello positions communication, recognition, and integrity as strategic tools. The result is a deeply practical handbook for leaders who want to replace empty talk with lasting movement.

In most organizations, the moment after a big strategy announcement is a turning point: either momentum is sustained, or progress quietly fades away. Patty Azzarello calls this critical period the Middle—the long journey between inspiration and implementation. She argues that leaders routinely underestimate how long and hard this stretch will be, which is why execution falters.

Why Strategies Stall

Azzarello likens corporate enthusiasm for new initiatives to a gym membership: at first, everyone’s motivated; later, they get distracted and revert to old habits. She describes employees sitting through grand rollout meetings, thinking, “I’ve seen this before—if I wait it out, it’ll go away.” This quiet skepticism is deadly. Momentum collapses when employees fail to see concrete progress, and leaders mistake initial buy-in for enduring commitment.

To outsmart this pattern, you must define mid-term checkpoints that break an 18-month initiative into visible wins. One company, for example, transformed the goal “sell higher” into measurable phased progress: identify target executives in month one, train account managers by month three, secure 10 enterprise meetings by month six. These milestones re-energized teams by proving movement was possible. Absent such clarity, leaders drift into what Azzarello calls “admiring the problem”—talking instead of acting.

Smart Talk vs. Action Talk

Azzarello warns about what she calls the “smart talk trap” (a concept she credits to Bob Sutton and Jeffrey Pfeffer). In this trap, people fill meetings with articulate, detailed discussions that sound intelligent but achieve nothing. They describe challenges, cite data, or analyze complexity—yet make zero decisions. Talk replaces movement. To escape, she advises shifting from situation discussions (“here’s the problem”) to outcome discussions (“what will success look like?”). Asking “what will we see when this is working?” forces specificity and reveals next steps.

Control Points and Visibility

A central device in Azzarello’s execution playbook is the use of control points—key outcomes that indicate whether you’re truly progressing. Instead of endless process metrics, she urges leaders to identify visible indicators like “customers are describing our product in our new messaging” or “Europe now has four successful retail partners.” She cites Temple Grandin’s “limping cows” standard as an analogy: measuring outcomes, not process details. If the cows are limping, you fail the audit—regardless of the countless procedural checklists that claim compliance. Likewise, if the business isn’t performing visibly, paperwork doesn’t help.

The Middle’s danger isn’t only delay—it’s drift. To prevent drift, Azzarello insists on timelines, visible tracking, and consistent communication. Her tool of choice? A one-page timeline where she marks, “You are here,” with key milestones behind and ahead. Each time you show progress, people believe again. “Every time you show this,” she writes, “one less person will ask, ‘Are we still doing this?’ and will just start doing it.”

You can’t execute a new strategy with an old team. That’s Patty Azzarello’s blunt message in the O = Organization section of her MOVE model. Every transformation begins with the uncomfortable truth that not everyone will be able—or willing—to move forward. Leaders often try to make the best of their existing people, hoping they’ll evolve. But as Azzarello writes, “There is no effective antidote for the wrong team.”

Are All the Ropes Tight?

One of Azzarello’s most vivid metaphors comes from her dogsledding experience in Canada. Picture 17 teams of dogs, straining against their harnesses, ready to run. When all the ropes are tight, the sled can surge forward. But if even one dog faces backward or stands still, you’re going nowhere. “Are all the ropes tight?” she asks leaders to inquire. If someone isn’t pulling their weight, lacks skill, or resists change, the whole organization drags.

Her advice is to evaluate teams with ruthless honesty. Who is truly capable of doing what the business now demands? Who embodies forward motion versus nostalgia for the old way? Building a high-performing team requires courage to address misalignment, even when it’s uncomfortable.

Blank-Sheet Thinking

When redesigning a structure, Azzarello recommends starting with a blank-sheet org chart. Don’t begin by shuffling current people—start with the outcomes the business needs. Define the ideal roles to achieve those outcomes, including new capabilities, collaboration patterns, and scope. Only then should you map existing staff to this new structure. Some boxes will be empty; some people will not fit. It’s difficult, but clarity beats incremental tinkering.

She shares a turnaround where multiple business units competed internally and confused both customers and partners. Her blank-sheet approach—integrating separate units under one unified go-to-market team—restored clarity and accountability. The structure finally matched the strategy. The lesson mirrors John Kotter’s (in Leading Change) insistence that structure must support the new vision, not sustain legacy comfort zones.

Talent: Always Be Recruiting

Azzarello encourages leaders to “always be recruiting.” Don’t wait for openings to find great people; build relationships continually. She distinguishes between “stars,” who learn fast and create possibilities, and “won’ts,” those who refuse to engage. The former deserve freedom; the latter, she advises bluntly, must go. Keeping underperforming or toxic employees demoralizes high performers and erodes trust. Removing the wrong people, she insists, increases morale because it restores fairness and standards.

Developing Capacity

Beyond hiring, leaders must increase organizational capacity by delegation and development. “Delegating,” Azzarello says, “is not just assigning work—it’s teaching someone to do your job.” By letting top performers make real decisions and occasionally fail, you build successors and free yourself to operate at a higher level. Trust accelerates capability. Over time, every team member should grow from merely doing their job to expanding the team’s total output—delivering more, better, and faster than before. Organization, in MOVE, means creating an engine of people who can carry the strategy when you’re not in the room.

Valor is Azzarello’s answer to fear, fatigue, and uncertainty—the traits that erode strategic execution. In any transformation, leaders will meet resistance, setbacks, and self-doubt. When progress stalls, they must “burn the ships at the beach,” as she puts it, closing the option of retreat and forcing forward movement.

Burn the Ships at the Beach

In a chapter named for Hernán Cortés’s fateful command, Azzarello recounts leading a demoralized software engineering team from chaos to discipline. When she enforced a structured process (the SEI model) over developers’ preferences, they rebelled. Colleagues warned her she’d lose talent. But she held firm, repeating “process, schedule, features” as the mantra. Within months, quality soared, release cycles shortened, and morale improved. Two resisters quit—but everyone else thrived. The lesson: consistency and conviction transform culture faster than compromise.

Courage Under Pressure

Valor means refusing to soften commitments when fear hits. As she writes, “Your organization will watch for the slightest pause in your commitment. If they see doubt, it’s game over.” Leaders must project stability even when nervous, because uncertainty ripples outward. This echoes Jim Collins’s “Stockdale Paradox” (Good to Great): confront brutal facts while maintaining faith in eventual success. Azzarello adds that Valor also involves protection—guard the team members who exemplify the new way “with your life,” shielding them from skeptics and bureaucratic sabotage.

Do Less with Less

Courage also means facing resource reality. In “Don’t Sign Up for the Impossible,” she rejects the harmful corporate habit of inflating targets without support. She recounts refusing to endorse false revenue projections, even when pressured by superiors. “The business you want does not exist,” she told executives, insisting on a smaller plan she could deliver. Ironically, these moments of honesty built her credibility. Valor, she emphasizes, isn’t reckless bravado—it’s intelligent, principled courage.

Fear and Imposter Syndrome

Azzarello addresses the personal side of Valor in “Mission Impossible.” Fear, she argues, is universal. Her remedy: normalize it, befriend it, and act anyway. Drawing inspiration from Elizabeth Gilbert’s metaphor (“keep fear in the backseat—it’s not allowed to drive”), she explains how even confident leaders feel like imposters. Facing fear openly prevents it from warping into arrogance or bullying. Valor, then, is empathy under pressure: courageous action grounded in authenticity.

The final letter in MOVE—E for Everyone—reflects Azzarello’s conviction that no leader, no matter how strong, can sustain change alone. Transformations fail not because people resist, but because they don’t feel included or confident the change is real. The cure is not more corporate messaging but genuine, two-way conversation.

Telling Isn’t Communicating

Azzarello begins “Conversation” with a simple truth: when you present your strategy, your audience isn’t listening. Their minds wander. They’ve heard it all before. So, she warns, “Telling does not equal communicating.” True communication occurs only when people begin talking about the strategy among themselves. The goal, then, is not broadcasting but sparking conversation. You’ve succeeded when employees explain the strategy to each other in their own words.

Decorate the Change

To keep the conversation alive through the long Middle, leaders must make change visible—what she calls “decorating the change.” Drawing inspiration from a nonprofit named Heifer International, she explains how ritual and symbol sustain transformation. Heifer’s “Passing on the Gift” ceremonies celebrated each time a family donated an animal’s offspring to another family, keeping their community transformation alive decades later. Likewise, corporate leaders can “decorate” change with visible artifacts—shirts, contests, blogs, or celebrations—that signal, “Yes, we’re really doing this.”

Show Up and Share

Top-down communication still matters—but only when consistent. Azzarello shares her 17-year habit of writing a Friday update for her team, summarizing news, progress, and appreciation. When she skipped a week, panic ensued: rumors of company trouble spread. The insight: regularity builds trust more than grand speeches. People crave predictability and presence. Her rule of thumb: “You must communicate your message 21 times before they believe you.”

Listen Where Work Happens

Finally, Azzarello champions active listening. In “Listen on Purpose,” she recalls holding 80 one-on-one meetings in her first weeks as a GM. These conversations revealed hidden problems her managers never mentioned—duplicate projects, toxic leaders, miscommunications—and shaped her real strategy. Listening, she argues, is not a nicety but a control point: your insight into reality depends on what people actually tell you. By promoting conversation—across functions, through blogs, forums, and informal chats—leaders replace hierarchy with movement. Everyone sees, speaks, and sustains the transformation together.

Numbers and deadlines don’t move companies—people do. In her closing chapter, “Power and Trust,” Azzarello reframes execution as a human endeavor grounded in respect. She contrasts two leadership archetypes: those who cling to imagined power (ego, hierarchy, secrecy) and those who cultivate real power through trust, transparency, and shared purpose.

Imagined Power vs. Real Power

“Imagined-power” leaders, she writes, confuse positional authority with personal worth. They dominate meetings, hoard information, and use fear as a motivator. Real-power leaders, by contrast, engage everyone as equals. They ask questions, listen, and admit they don’t know everything. Azzarello credits her success—rising to CEO by age 38—to leaders who modeled humility and generosity. Their openness built genuine influence that fear-based managers could never replicate.

Trust as the Engine of Transformation

Trust, Azzarello says, is not sentimental—it’s operational. It makes people take initiative without fear. “There is no neutral,” she insists. “You’re either building trust or destroying it.” Micromanagement, broken promises, and silence all drain trust. Regular acknowledgment does the opposite. She recounts an executive who asked employees to mark not only work deadlines but also personal milestones—school plays, weddings—on the project calendar. Recognizing humanity made team members fiercely loyal and eager to help.

Making People Feel Like Superheroes

Perhaps the most moving passage in the book comes from a former employee’s note: “When I worked for you, I thought I was Superman.” For Azzarello, that line defines real leadership. Making people feel capable, valued, and trusted multiplies performance far beyond financial incentives. Execution thrives not because of command, but because people believe they can and should move mountains. The leader’s job, ultimately, is to create the conditions where that belief persists—through the endless grind of the Middle—until success is inevitable.