78| Strategy Isn't Enough: 9 Practices to Help Your Team Meet the Moment [with Karina Mangu-Ward]

Have you poured months into a strategy your team couldn't bring to life? Or watched capable people work harder than ever, and still struggle to pull together as a team?

High performance isn't about a better strategy, more talent, or longer hours. It's about how your team works together, every single day.

Karina Mangu-Ward, author of Teams That Meet the Moment, has spent more than a decade helping complex organizations redesign the messy day-to-day of how people actually get things done together. Her belief: good everyday teaming habits are both good for people and good for results. You don't have to choose between them.

Making this real doesn't require a reinvention. You just need the right structure and the intention to show up differently. In this episode, Karina shares simple, tangible practices you can use in your very next meeting or strategic project.

You’ll Learn:

• The three lies leaders tell themselves about teamwork, and why believing them holds your team back
• How the framework of the "Even Over" ends the swirl when your team is stuck choosing between two competing options
• Why creating a "Safe to Try" process gets a team unstuck when you're chasing consensus and certainty
• What a steady team cadence unlocks when everything around you feels like an emergency
• The instinct nearly every high performer has to unlearn before they can build a team that thrives

ABOUT MY GUEST:

Karina Mangu-Ward is a partner at August Public, an organizational change consultancy that helps large, complex organizations build more human-centered ways of working, whose clients include PepsiCo, Planned Parenthood, and Sundance. She's the author of Teams That Meet the Moment: 9 Practices for Unlocking Performance and Growth in Uncertain Times. Karina's passion is helping groups navigate complexity, gain insight, and unlock highly complex challenges.

IMPORTANT LINKS:

• Full episode show notes: ChainOfLearning.com/78 
• Connect with Karina: linkedin.com/in/karina-mangu-ward 
• Purchase a copy of Karina's book: Teams That Meet the Moment
• Learn more about Karina’s company: aug.co 
• Take the Team assessment: assessment.aug.co 
• Follow me on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kbjanderson 
• Subscribe to my newsletter: kbjanderson.com/newsletter 
• Check out my website for resources and working together: KBJAnderson.com 
• Join us on the Japan Leadership Experience: KBJAnderson.com/japantrip 

TIMESTAMPS FOR THIS EPISODE:
03:01 Why great strategy still fails
04:13 The hustle culture myth that's burning teams out
05:20 Everyday habits drive extraordinary teams
07:11 Meeting the moment in uncertain times
09:13 The "Safe to Try" mindset that breaks gridlock
11:18 Setting guardrails without limiting innovation
12:06 Why small bets outperform big risks
13:29 Unlearning the need to have the answer
15:17 Why sticky practices beat complicated frameworks
17:16 Simple retrospectives that strengthen learning
20:19 The surprising cost of treating everything like an emergency
22:09 Using "Even Over" to make better trade-offs
25:28 Intention over reaction in decision-making
30:32 When perfection becomes procrastination
31:53 Why working in public accelerates learning
34:22 The power of stories over instruction
37:08 Intention + practice = better leadership
39:14 What trade-off do you need to make?

Learn more and apply for the November 2026 cohort of my Japan Leadership Experience: https://kbjanderson.com/japantrip/