Executing Your Strategy was published by Harvard Business School Press and written by two MGRUSH alumni.

This tightly woven book provides a formula and clear instruction on how to transform strategy into projects and activities. Authors Mark Morgan and William Malek (both ex-professors of Stanford University), spoke with us about the importance of professional facilitation to helping groups “plan your work” (strategy) and “work your plan” (project).

The INVEST Imperatives of Executing Your Strategy

Strategy Execution Framework

They frame a strong argument for their six INVEST imperatives (or, domains). You will find their phases quite valuable when managing your own program portfolios:

1. Ideation—communicating purpose, identity, and intent
2. Nature—aligning strategy with culture and structure
3. Vision—clarity of goals and metrics
4. Engagement—portfolio management
5. Synthesis—program and project execution
6. Transition—benefit to mainstream operations

From an our selfish perspective, they highly recommend building a Center for Strategic Excellence. The Center would anchor itself upon effective, neutral facilitators and structured meeting design. We hope you are doing your best across your departments to nurture facilitative leadership around you, your staff, and your program office. Their INVEST approach will help.

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Don’t ruin your career by hosting bad meetings. Sign up for a workshop or send this to someone who should. MGRUSH workshops focus on meeting design and practice. Each person practices tools, methods, and activities every day during the week. Therefore, while some call this immersion, we call it the road to building high-value facilitation skills.

Our workshops also provide a superb way to earn up to 40 SEUs from the Scrum Alliance, 40 CDUs from IIBA, 40 Continuous Learning Points (CLPs) based on Federal Acquisition Certification Continuous Professional Learning Requirements using Training and Education activities, 40 Professional Development Units (PDUs) from SAVE International, as well as 4.0 CEUs for other professions. (See workshop and Reference Manual descriptions for details.)

Want a free 10-minute break timer? Sign up for our once-monthly newsletter HERE and receive a timer along with four other of our favorite facilitation tools, free.

Facilitation Expert

Terrence Metz, president of MG RUSH Facilitation Training, was just 22-years-old and working as a Sales Engineer at Honeywell when he recognized a widespread problem—most meetings were ineffective and poorly led, wasting both time and company resources. However, he also observed meetings that worked. What set them apart? A well-prepared leader who structured the session to ensure participants contributed meaningfully and achieved clear outcomes.

Throughout his career, Metz, who earned an MBA from Kellogg (Northwestern University) experienced and also trained in various facilitation techniques. In 2004, he purchased MG RUSH where he shifted his focus toward improving established meeting designs and building a curriculum that would teach others how to lead, facilitate, and structure meetings that drive results. His expertise in training world-class facilitators led to the 2020 publication of Meetings That Get Results: A Guide to Building Better Meetings, a comprehensive resource on effectively building consensus.

Grounded in the principle that “nobody is smarter than everybody,” the book details the why, what, and how of building consensus when making decisions, planning, and solving problems. Along with a Participant’s Guide and supplemental workshops, it supports learning from foundational awareness to professional certification.

Metz’s first book, Change or Die: A Business Process Improvement Manual, tackled the challenges of process optimization. His upcoming book, Catalyst: Facilitating Innovation, focuses on meetings and workshops that don’t simply end when time runs out but conclude with actionable next steps and clear assignments—ensuring progress beyond discussions and ideas.