In my experience, the fastest way to sabotage a good hire – even a great hire – is to bring them into a business where the structure is unclear, the direction is fuzzy, and the expectations are undefined. Talent does not thrive in chaos. It withers.
This is why getting the team structure and alignment right is not a “nice to have”. It is the foundation on which everything else is built.
The Hidden Reality in Most Leadership Teams
What I often see when I walk into leadership teams is not a lack of intelligence, effort, or commitment. It is a lack of clarity. Teams are unclear about what they are aiming for, why they are doing it, what they stand for, and how their individual roles contribute to the bigger picture. And yet, we expect high performance.
This is the equivalent of putting talented athletes on a field with no game plan, no positions, and no rules – and then wondering why they keep bumping into each other.
In Compounding Advantage, I use the analogy of being a coach to a rugby team. To win you would need to find the right players within your budget for each position on the field and then develop a clear game plan that everyone on the team knows what they need to do. In rugby the positions are defined whereas in business these will differ depending on the size and type of business. However, the principle is the same if you are the leader of a team you need to define the positions you need on your team and fill these with the best talent.
Vision, Purpose and Values: The Context for Performance
Every high-performing team operates inside a clear framework. They know where they are going, why it matters, and how they behave while doing it. When those elements are missing, people fill in the blanks themselves. That is where misalignment creeps in.
One person pushes for growth at all costs. Another focuses on stability. Someone else prioritises culture. Another chases efficiency. All are well-intended, but they are pulling in different directions. Clarity at the top creates alignment below. Without it, you don’t get teamwork – you get activity.
Strategy Gives the Team Its Shape
Once vision and purpose are clear, strategy gives shape to the team. Strategy answers the question: how are we going to win? And that directly informs how the team should be structured.
Yet many businesses build their teams organically and reactively. They add people as pressure points emerge. Over time, the structure becomes a patchwork of roles, overlapping responsibilities, and unclear ownership. Decisions slow down, accountability weakens, and execution becomes inconsistent. Structure is not bureaucracy. Structure is clarity. And clarity is one of the greatest gifts you can give a team.
Where Most Teams Fall Apart: Role Clarity
Even when leaders are clear on vision and strategy, there is often a fatal gap: individual role clarity. People do not know where their responsibility starts and ends, what success looks like in their role, or how their work links to the overall outcome.
When that happens, duplication of effort, things falling through the cracks, tension between colleagues, and quiet resentment start to appear. Good people want to do good work, but they need a clear lane to run in. Without defined roles, performance becomes personality driven. The loudest voices dominate, the conscientious overwork, and the quieter contributors get overlooked. The leader ends up carrying far more than they should. That is not a team. That is a collection of individuals.
Why A-Players Struggle in Poorly Structured Teams
There is a common belief that if you hire A-players, performance will take care of itself. In reality, the opposite is often true. A-players have options. They want to win, they want clarity, and they want to work in an environment where effort leads to impact.
When you place them into unclear structures with fuzzy strategies, undefined roles, and inconsistent leadership, they become frustrated. And eventually, they leave. This is why some businesses become revolving doors for talent. Not because the people were wrong, but because the environment was.
You cannot outsource structure to talent. You must build the structure that allows talent to thrive.
Alignment Before Performance
High-performing teams are not built by accident. They are designed. They are clear on their destination, their reason for existing, their values, their strategy, their structure, and their individual responsibilities. That alignment creates speed. It reduces friction. It prevents politics. It enables trust.
The Bottom Line
If you want a winning team, start with structure. Before you hire. Before you upgrade. Before you replace. Ask whether your vision is clear, your purpose compelling, your values lived, your strategy defined, your structure aligned to that strategy, and whether every person knows their role and how they contribute.
Because even the best players in the world will struggle in a broken system. But an aligned team, with clear structure and clear roles, will often outperform a more talented team that lacks direction.
In the end, winning teams are not built by chance. They are built by design.