The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - When Strategy Fails Fix the Intent Gap

Episode Date: October 20, 2025

Most failed strategies don’t collapse because of evil plans or poor execution. They fail because the intent behind them was never clear. In this episode of People, Process, Progress, I unpack what I call the Intent Gap: the disconnect between leadership vision and team understanding.Drawing from The People, Process, and Progress of Project Management, I share how defining intent early gives teams direction, how to test for alignment, and how to fix the gap before it derails execution.If your projects feel busy but not aligned, this episode will help you rebuild clarity and momentum from the top down.Dive deeper in the book at https://a.co/d/eQKtRpI

Every failed strategy I've ever seen, whether in healthcare IT, public safety, emergency management, had one thing in common. Nobody remembered what the leader actually wanted. The documents were there, the project plans were there, the meetings were happening, but somewhere between vision and execution, the Y, got lost. And when intent gets lost, energy follows. Teams go through the motions, communications get reactive, and leaders start managing updates. instead of outcomes. Welcome to People Process Progress. I'm Kevin Pinell, author of The Stability Equation and The People Process and Progress of Project Management. On this podcast and the People Process Progress YouTube channel, I share lessons from life, leadership, training, and exercise ideas

to help you own your growth, align your work, and anchor your teams through practical steps. Now let's get into it. Welcome back, everybody. Today's episode is part of a series called Busting Myths and Building Pillars, which is what I do in my book, The People Process of Progress of project management. And based off a talk I just gave and interactions I had at the PMI, Southwest Virginia Fall Symposium, and it was an excellent event, great people, great opportunity to share what I've learned, some stuff in the book. And when I wrote the people processed and progress of project management, I started with the idea that projects acceded or feel based on how well leaders communicate intent. That's the first pillar of the seven pillars of project management.

I wrote, a solid process turns chaos into coordination, quote, but process alone is it enough, right? People need to know why behind what they're doing. It seems very simple, but without it, even the best process becomes just mechanical. So leader's intent is the North Star for the whole team from everyone, right? It's clear, concise statement that answers four questions. Who are we serving? What are we doing? Why does it matter? matter. And what does success look like when I'm not in the room? So this isn't a requirements gathering, which is a pitfall I've seen, particularly with more technical projects where folks want to jump right into the specific details and the technical aspects. That's not what this is.

Who's the thing for? What are we doing? Can be a basic statement. So who are we serving? Let's say, I'll say in healthcare, we're serving all the nurses in our organization. What are we doing? We are trying to improve their documentation workflow by reducing time for them. by automating something, right? Why does it matter? Well, less time doing administrative work means more time at the patient's bedside and gives them a break from probably one of the less popular aspects of their job, which is documentation, which I know even as a project manager I'm not a super fan of. And what does success look like when I'm not in the room? That means the team is working together. We're communicating regularly, right? The tempo continues to move

without having to have a leader sit there and look over all of our shoulders, which is just grown up big people stuff. Right. And it's not something I invented, right? It's one I carried from the Navy, from emergency management, from incident management, and it helps when you're working kind of in a chaotic environment, right, whether you're in an emergency room, hurricane response, or multimillion dollar IT implementation, there's not time, nor really should be a place for micromanagement, right? We need a shared understanding from the top of the initiative, right? And so a problem I've seen is, especially as we head deeper into 2025 and then in the 2026 is a lot of leaders still assume that their intent is obvious, right? And we know

what assumptions mean. They announce transformation. They launch an initiative and they think the mission statement on the slides cover it. And often it just doesn't, right? And sometimes people interpret silence and ambiguity in their own ways. It's often very quiet on calls with high-level people with the C-suite, right? A developer might think success means getting the code out. A clinical leader might think it means improved patient care. Our CFO might think it means staying under budget, which all three could be right in isolation, but together do they make sense and do they work well together? In my book, I talk about the value of clarity over comfort, right? It's not always comfortable to restate what seems obvious, but it's necessary. To quote myself in the book,

as I wrote, quote, a leader's role isn't to manage every decision, it's to create the environment where people make good ones without constant supervision, end quote. That's what leader's intent does, right? It connects strategy to daily work and gives people permission to act within boundaries. When that intent is missing, teams either freeze or freelance. When it's clear, they move forward confidently. So here's what I've found helpful. And this will be the format, essentially.

I'll put a cool hook out there, play my standard intro, focus on the pillar or the myth or whatever we're going to bust here or build up. And then I'm to share what I've found helpful. So for me, in the intent, at the very start of a project that I'm asked to lead or sometimes before I start even, I set up time with the primary stakeholders, right? This usually means I talk to the sponsor and the business owner. Business owner is the kind of lead person that has their finger on the pulse of what's actually happening on the ground.

And the sponsor, of course, is the executive that approved the money and the go-forward and that kind of stuff. and I just I talk here's and I tell them here's how I can support you here's what a project manager can do for you if they haven't worked with the PM before and even if they have I just kind of remind them and then I want to have a clear understanding of their intent for the project and it sounds simple and it kind of is but we just make time right we have open and honest discussion and we meaning the project managers will say the royal we we document what the leader wants us to do and what they don't want us to do and then we're going to share that clearly with the team so here's

an actionable step that I'll keep doing and that I implore you all, whether you're new project manager, you're standing up a project management office. Here's your move this week, right? It's called an intent map. There's four boxes on one page, right? Who? Who are we serving? What, what are we delivering? Why? Why does it matter? And tomorrow, what does success look like when we're done? Then take the one pager, read it out loud to your sponsor and your team, and come back to it, right? So you don't have to go over this every week, though you could in the status meetings or the team sinks or whatever, but at least every couple weeks or a month. Or if you notice the team is kind of getting off track, say it again, right?

Certainly remind it to the steering committee, this is a great practice. Don't email it again, read it and then send it. So it's not just texting it in an electronic page. And you'll be amazed at what people hear versus what they think you mean. When someone says, I thought we were doing X, it's not resistance, it's a gift, it's clarity, it's right, it's showing up early and it tells me as the project manager, oh, how can I better explain this? Because they clearly didn't get the message and that's on me, right? That's part of my gig as a project manager is to clarify and keep communication going. And I've seen the most mature

teams that revisit this, like I mentioned every month, right? Is this still true? Because projects evolve. Even if we're waterfall, things change in the real world. An alignment is something we have to maintain, right? Not something that we just check off and go, yep, we said it. And everybody should just know it from now on. Thank you so much for listening to the first episode of the Busting Myths Building Pillars, the focus on when strategy fails, fix the intent gap. If today's conversation helped you on how intent drives alignment, subscribe wherever you listen, Apple, Spotify, Pandora, etc. Leave a quick review, please. That brings it to the top. Helps other people get exposure to it. Share it with another leader that you might need to reset.

And if you want to dive deeper and get some more actionable tips, again, whether you're brand new or you're a seasoned project manager looking for kind of a new spin and a practical application for maybe one of your peers or an executive leader standing up a project management office, check out the book, The People Process and Progress of Project Management. It's available on Amazon and paperback hardcover and Kindle or ebook. I'm Kevin Pinell. And until next time, remember to keep the people first, keep your process aligned, and we will make progress together.

at peopleprocessprogress.com. Godspeed, y'all.