Now it’s time to sit down with every part of the implementation team (sales, marketing, engineering, customer service, finance, legal) where there are interdependencies, to determine who needs to do what to make this strategy a reality. You can do this in small groups or all at once.

Each function or division should address these questions:

Next, each group should use a responsibility grid. A sample of a partially filled-out grid is shown in Table 7-1. For this example, Sales has committed to four action steps in support of a new mobile product.

Using a grid is an easy way to name the key next steps by group and then compare these next steps between groups where any interdependencies lie. Without such a process, some tacit expectations for what others need to do gets lost in translation, and thus a gap is created. We limit these grids to five responsibilities because that’s about as many as any group can realistically track. If the rest of the process has gone well, the Take phase goes really quickly because everyone is already thinking about what they need to do to make the larger strategy a success, and they likely started to identify interdependencies during the Select phase.

The Take phase grid can be filled out in a face-to-face working session, or completed independently by each functional group. Now, you might be wondering why we are asking you to do a template model when earlier we trashed templates. The key here is that you’re not being asked to fill in the blanks. You are being asked to discuss (and then document) key things for each group. There is value in asking each group questions such as, “Do you need anything from engineering?” If the answer is no, then you can confirm, “So you have no dependencies on engineering?” The point is that you want to ultimately meet and talk about the action steps, because this discussion irons out the interdependencies between the various functional units and makes all parties aware of any changes that need to happen in the organization.

This is also the place for critical negotiations about trade-offs, resource allocation, and agreements that need to be made before you focus on action (not three months later when the problems start happening). This discussion is essential for the strategy to function properly, and its importance cannot be overemphasized. Completing the interdependencies, deliverables, and targets sections of the grid lets you clearly and specifically articulate expected commitments (Table 7-2). Details and dates are vital here, because the specific commitments become the way to measure progress once the strategy has been launched. For example, “first week of March” is much better than “Q1” if other people are expected to act on that deliverable.

Sometimes strategies affect many parts of an organization. This take-ownership system can work in a cascading fashion, so you can fill out the grid at the VP level, then again at the director level, then at the team level, and even at the individual level as necessary. There are various ways to do this. You can do it interdepartmentally at a low operational level and then bubble up, or it can be top-down. But be sure no member of the team is saying to themselves, “There’s no way this is going to happen,” without raising the issue. That is, be sure not to stay locked into VP commits, because if you do, you could be right back in the “6x product expansion in 18 months” situation. When Take is done, the defined actions create a “nesting” effect, which aligns everyone in the organization along the same goals. It provides a way to check whether the individual actions (at any level) add up to the expected outcome.

Specifics are important because once this list of actions has been agreed to, everyone can get to work. Everyone knows what needs to happen when, and the focus can now be on execution. In terms of progress and status, the roles are clear, the goals have been specified, and at any point in time, anyone can assess how well the strategy is being executed. You can keep the strategy alive by using these Take documents to review where you are, whether anything in the market has changed that warrants a review or change, and then tune your commitments as needed.

While the Take phase is critical in supporting a successful implementation, some teams may complain, “Why do we have to write this all down?” The real objective of this process is to catalyze the right kinds of conversations ahead of time, and create a visible action system that can be made visible within the company. You may find that some people need coaching to see the benefits of this system, why it is important to be extra-specific when making commitments, and why this process is important.

One thing that I’ve seen teams do is name a “take” item for beliefs/activities that have to be given up. I’ve seen it work or not work, depending on the culture. For example, if a company is shifting from a mostly services company to a product company, there is a big change in how they think about customer requests. In a service company, you say yes to just about anything as long as it’s profitable. In a product company, you often want to standardize feature sets, and that forces a different discipline. In this example, the “what has to be given up” is custom orders/product customization. I recommend you have discussions during the Select phase about what you will stop doing, but if you fear something won’t stick inside the organization as a key “stop,” you can name and capture that “stop action” here as a major take.

At the conclusion of this final phase, you will fully understand:

To reiterate, the goal of the Take phase is for everyone involved in the collaborative strategy creation and execution be able to state what the strategy is and what critical actions they will need to complete to make the strategy a successful reality. By doing this well, we are fixing the “5% know the strategy” issue for your organization.

The leader’s role is to keep facilitating what at times becomes tedious attention to detail. This doesn’t mean that the leader does or does not have to focus on the details. Either approach can work. But the leader must confirm that the right people are focusing on the details. That may mean that the leader openly probes into the details of one or two issues, which signals their importance, and then asks generally about whether other issues have been covered at this level of detail. As the effort moves from collaborative strategy creation to collaborative strategy execution, the leader’s job is to champion the work of the team, making sure that everyone involved understands the direction the strategy sets forth and its purpose. Remember, if you skip a crucial conversation here, you pay for it later with many more. Take the time and have the right conversations; this creates alignment and shared responsibilities.

For each of us collaborators, this is the time we get to show up to make sure we co-own the success. The Take phase is where the rubber meets the road, and every person—from executives to individual contributors—makes sure things tie together, and then commits openly to his or her actions.

Table 7-3 lists the leader’s main responsibilities in the Take phase, as well as those of the team.

As the leader, you will want to champion the efforts of the team, and then drive accountability. Having people commit to what they will do gives individuals a chance to show up.

If you can find a way to add transparency and make commitments visible so anyone can see who is responsible for what, it will help ensure accountability throughout the organization. This might involve publishing agendas or notes, reiterating commitments at key meetings, or creating some kind of business review (some companies use a quarterly business review) where key decisions and next steps are communicated.

Make key decisions and next steps specific enough to show who is responsible for fulfilling each commitment. This helps make people accountable to their peers (and perhaps to their bosses), and it enables effective progress tracking later without to the appearance of micromanaging the effort. Good progress tracking is key to surfacing issues during implementation so that those issues get the attention they need. By increasing the transparency of the collaborative strategy as it unfolds, each person is now in the driver’s seat of changing how work gets done at your company. And because of the way you are doing these discussions, you are driving a cultural shift in your organization toward shared ownership of success.