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Attributes of the t3 framework:
the right stuff

The "right stuff" is about ensuring the right people are in place and ready to deliver. They feel strongly that they are working with a group of people they respect and can get the job done. The foundation of any team are the people who comprise it. The needs of any team go far beyond ensuring they "can do" the job itself (competence) and extend to areas that allow the team, and its individual members, to work effectively together in delivering the desired outcomes.

These include, for example, possessing a growth mindset, allowing people to adapt more effectively to adversity and solve problems that lead to a breakthrough (‘can do’ attitude). Openness to other’s ideas (a true team player), grit and positivity are other examples of traits of people that are important on any team.

Simply put, members of the team "can do, can do".

clarity & alignment

People and teams are clear on what they need to do and why it is important. High-performing team feel strongly that the direction is clear, and line-of-sight exists between their work and that of the teams or organization on the whole.

There is clarity in the vision, mission and objectives of the team and clarity in how such objectives cascade down to each and every member within it.

Clarity is nothing without alignment, at least over the longer-term. People who know what to do can certainly deliver some good results, within their own sphere of influence; however, alignment is vital for sustained execution excellence. Alignment suggests that people are committed to their role and what they need to do to produce good results.

Simply put, members of the team "know what to do."

empowerment

Empowerment is all about ensuring people have the freedom, support, and tools to deliver on what is expected along with the systems and process to work effectively together.

The nature of the way organizations are designed and the likelihood that most are populated by human beings leads to a natural dysfunction that often is referred to as silo thinking or behavior. Left alone, silo behavior and potentially relational-based conflict WILL arise. This calls for organizations to install a ritual that ensure these are outlined, clarified, and negotiated so that people can work effectively together in driving value for their customers, and the business.

Additionally, we find many teams that have too many priorities that are crippling the team’s effectiveness and/or leading to burnout. Typically, ad hoc demands from the business may be the culprit, and without a priority reconciliation process, frustration emerges.

Simply put, members of the team are "allowed and enabled to".

belonging

Belonging suggests that people fit within your organizational context—they "belong" here and are connected to the organization.

Organizations cannot afford to have disengaged employees—and yet, many in the workforce report being actively disengaged. Others are passively disengagement manifesting in some form of "quiet quitting." This results in lost productivity and an unhappy workplace in general.

While there are many factors that may be at play here, the most important one is a sense of connection people have with their company, a belief that they (the company) are doing the right thing (beyond making money) and that they are operating in a way that is consistent with making a real contribution to society. For newer generations of workers this is of particular importance. It all starts with purpose and values.

Simply put, members of the team "believe it's right to do".

agile execution

Agile Execution is all about how the team works together to adapt to dynamic conditions. It is our belief that no initial plan will survive for very long, placing a burden on the team to pivot consistently in order to deliver upon their strategic outcomes.

In today’s VUCA world, planning is taking on new forms as organizations recognize that within weeks after initiating any plan, it can be rendered, at worst case, useless, or in best case, intentions remain on track but how one gets there changes rapidly. The environment is simply too dynamic to invest months preparing, planning, and budgeting for a reality that may not exist in six months.

In our view, get the strategic intent right, plan on how to get there, and instill agile execution rituals that allow the team to adapt to the realities of executing against the plan.

Simply put, members of the team "will do what it takes with integrity".

togetherness

A sense of togetherness results when the teams do the other five attributes well, leading to sustained high-performance and lots of enjoyment working with fellow colleagues. No matter how remote a team may operate, leaders need to work to secure this sense of "togetherness" and, ideally, bring people together every so often.

In such teams, not only do you have exemplary engagement and behaviors from all constituent members but that final piece of "social glue" -- individuals motivated also by the very company of their team colleagues. This is the zone where intra-relationships are defined by shared levels of high professional respect and, indeed, deep friendships.

Team members bearing this attribute scale even greater heights (sometimes literally!) because not only are they passionate about what they do (as built on all the preceding qualities) but it is this comradeship that sits at the very nexus of this passion. There is no place they would rather be than with the companionship of their comrades and, with this fellowship, a sense of collective invincibility. For such teams, there is a mindset of "anything together".

Simply put, members of the team "build a legacy".

strategy & transformation

when strategy meets reality

back to all insights strategy & transformation

what two days in a room with a leadership team actually reveals

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Steve Morrissey

Every leadership team believes it has a strategy. Fewer have one that the organization can feel. Fewer still have the team operating system to deliver it.

Earlier this year, Perpetual completed a two-day strategic planning program with the executive leadership team of a premium consumer goods business operating across the Americas. The engagement was designed to move the organization from a cycle of reactive annual number-chasing toward a credible, regionally owned strategy grounded in a rigorous external assessment, a quantified team diagnostic, and structured in-room facilitation.

What unfolded over those two days was instructive, not just for this team, but for any leadership group navigating the gap between strategic ambition and organizational reality. This article shares what we observed, what the data confirmed, and what we believe any senior leader should take from it.

reading the external environment first

Before any internal diagnosis, the leadership team completed a rigorous assessment of the external environment calibrated to their region of operation. This was not a desk exercise. It was cross-referenced against the organization’s internal risk register and pressure-tested in the room against competitive intelligence prepared across three direct competitors.

The assessment covered political, economic, social, technology, legal, and environmental factors (PESTLE) – each evaluated for its primary driver and most acute near-term implication for a premium consumer goods business navigating a period of significant market volatility.

Several themes shaped the strategic planning conversation directly. The economic picture – recession risk, distributor consolidation, and tariff uncertainty – framed the case for portfolio discipline and the need for a clear brand prioritization model. Consumer behavior data on moderation trends and generational shifts reinforced the urgency of broadening the addressable audience beyond the existing core. And the technology gap, where the organization acknowledged it was meaningfully behind competitors in AI-driven consumer engagement, was flagged as a capability deficit requiring deliberate investment rather than a watching brief.

Risk was scored across both likelihood and potential impact. Political and economic factors rated highest in combined urgency. The technology dimension scored unexpectedly high relative to industry peers – reflecting the team’s own assessment that competitive AI capability had moved from a future consideration to a current disadvantage.

what the diagnostic data said

Alongside the external assessment, every member of the leadership team completed Perpetual’s proprietary t3® Diagnostic – a quantified assessment of organizational health across six attributes: the right stuff, clarity and alignment, empowerment, belonging, agile execution, and togetherness.

The overall score placed the team in the average range. The strongest result was Belonging, with the team scoring well above benchmark on purpose alignment and shared values. The weakest result, by a considerable margin, was Clarity and Alignment, classified as poor at the organizational level.

The gap between individual role clarity and organizational strategic clarity was stark: leaders were clear on their own objectives while confidence in the organization’s ability to cascade and communicate its strategy was significantly lower.

Two empowerment sub-scores drew particular attention. Process consistency – the lowest-scoring item in the entire diagnostic – and organizational obstacles both fell well below the level required for effective execution. Trust and autonomy were high. The structural environment around people was not. It is a pattern that produces capable, motivated leaders working through a system that routinely slows them down.

how the two-day program was structured

The program was designed around a deliberate sequencing: external environment before internal diagnosis, diagnostic before strategy, strategy before prioritization. This is intentional. Teams that jump to priorities without grounding in data tend to anchor on what is comfortable rather than what is necessary.

day one: context, diagnosis, and vision

  • Opening with competitive and market context: external environment findings, risk register cross-reference, competitor intelligence across three direct peers
  • Diagnostic playback: full t3 results presented to the team with commentary on patterns, outliers, and team-specific observations
  • Honest in-room observation: naming what was visible in the data before the team arrived – and what was confirmed once they were in the room
  • Vision alignment: the team worked toward and agreed a long-range vision statement with defined measures of success

day two: strategy, portfolio, and prioritization

  • Strategic pillar deep dives: each pillar worked through with sub-initiatives, named owners, and 12-18-month priority actions
  • Brand portfolio classification: mapping each brand against a growth framework to align effort and investment
  • Regional and channel prioritization: defining where to compete, at what intensity, and with what resources
  • Priority-setting exercise: surfacing and deliberately deprioritizing approximately 75 percent of the initiatives generated
  • Strategy on a page: synthesizing the two days into a single-page strategic reference the organization could use immediately

The 75 percent deprioritization figure is worth sitting with. Most leadership teams generate more good ideas than their organization can absorb. The willingness to deprioritize is not a failure of ambition. It is the exercise of strategic discipline.

what the program produced

Two days of structured facilitation produced a set of tangible outputs designed to be used – not filed. Each one serves a specific function in connecting strategic intent to organizational action.

what the room revealed about the team

Strategy sessions are diagnostic instruments whether organizations intend them to be or not. Two days of intensive work, under pressure, across a range of topics, reveals how a team actually operates. Three patterns were visible with enough consistency to warrant naming directly.

the first-team deficit

The team itself acknowledged that it was not operating as one team. Functional protectionism – most visibly between commercial and marketing – was creating friction that slowed decision-making and undermined cross-functional execution. The strategy will be delivered, or not, by the quality of the team operating system, not by the quality of the strategy document.

the accountability gap

The team identified a culture of avoiding direct feedback and a tendency toward consensus over clarity. The t3 candor sub-scale confirmed it. Underperformance that is not addressed directly becomes the norm. The norm becomes the ceiling.

the vocabulary problem

Across two days, the same strategic terms meant different things to different people. When a term produces different interpretations at different levels of the organization, cascade is unreliable by design, not by accident. Language alignment is not a soft capability. It is an execution prerequisite.

the question every leadership team should ask

The strategy produced over these two days was credible, ambitious, and owned by the right people. The more important question is not whether the strategy is good. It is whether the team operating system is capable of delivering it.

That question is answered by four things:

  • The quality of accountability architecture: who owns what, and whether ownership is real or ceremonial
  • The consistency of process: whether the structural environment enables or routinely obstructs the people inside it
  • The clarity of decision rights: who decides, who consults, who is informed – and whether that is shared understanding or individual assumption
  • The willingness of the leadership group to operate as a genuine first team: prioritizing the collective over the function

The most valuable thing any leadership team can do after a strategic planning session is not refine the strategy document. It is build the team that will deliver it.

what comes next

For organizations at this stage, Perpetual’s work after a strategic planning session focuses on three areas. Each is designed to address a specific gap between strategy as agreed and strategy as delivered.

The strategy is the beginning, not the destination. What happens in the weeks after the room is where it is won or lost.

Steve Morrissey | steve@beperpetual.com | beperpetual.com

about perpetual:

Perpetual is a team effectiveness and organizational design consultancy working with leadership teams across consumer goods and beyond. Our t3® framework and diagnostic are trusted by organizations committed to building high-performance cultures that execute.

Perpetual:  •  Executive Search  •  Leadership Development  •  Advisory  •  beperpetual.com

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