On the latest Sales Hunter Podcast, Mark welcomed Tim Ohai, author of “The Zen of Strategic Execution,” and a trusted advisor to global leaders at Shell, Microsoft, Walmart, and Workday. With deep roots in sales enablement and a master’s degree in Industrial Organization, Tim Ohai brings a unique blend of business practice and psychological insight to performance execution.
Why Confusion Destroys Sales
Did you know 95% of employees don’t know what their company’s strategy is? That confusion isn’t just costly, it can completely derail sales teams.
“Strategy is a series of decisions we make in order to achieve a targeted outcome,” Tim Ohai explains. Plans are valuable for thinking through scenarios, but execution requires decisive action, not endless paperwork.
Sales rarely go as planned. Quarter-by-quarter, it’s about moving forward and making adjustments in real time. Too often, leaders admit that they’re figuring out execution by “trial and error.” Teams left in the dark spin their wheels—and sellers end up trying to solve the wrong customer problems.
The Real Cost of Misalignment
Tim Ohai illustrates just how expensive misalignment can be, referencing NASA’s $326 million Mars project failure. Teams missed a critical detail: one worked in metric, the other in imperial. The result? Catastrophic loss. No one stopped to clarify what the numbers meant.
“It just goes dark. And they lost over 300 million bucks in seconds because one team used metric and the other team used imperial,” Tim Ohai notes. In sales, the same thing happens when sellers diagnose problems without getting clear on the customer’s real needs.
Fixing Execution: Sequence Matters
The Zen of Strategic Execution lays out five business essentials—clarity, empowerment, engagement, accountability, and culture. Each must be addressed in order.
“If I want a great culture, I need to make sure I have accountability, healthy, trust-based accountability first.”
Clarity comes first. If teams and customers don’t know what success looks like—or what their roles and priorities are—empowerment and engagement just lead to wasted effort. When sales pros help companies gain clarity on the real problem and the path forward, true consultative selling begins.
Creating Decision-Making Environments
Sales isn’t about rushing in with a solution at the first sign of need. Too many sellers “hijack” the conversation, killing deals and destroying future opportunities. The goal is to create a great environment for decision-making.
“Our goal number one is not to solve the problem, but to create a great decision-making environment. That is the Zen of strategic execution,” Tim Ohai says. When sellers help buyers gain confidence in their own decisions, sales move forward more smoothly.
The Leadership Cascade—and Breaking Bad Cycles
Pressure flows downhill. When leaders stress over hitting numbers, they transmit urgency and fear to their teams. The result is a cascading effect of burnout and toxic culture, with senior sales leaders averaging only 18 months in their roles.
“We promote that bad DNA. By the time they get to SVP or EVP, there’s an 18-month expiration date,” Tim Ohai warns.
Breaking these cycles starts internally—with self-awareness and mastery—before working outward. One crucial step: leaders and sellers must get neutral. Forget Pollyanna optimism. The key is seeing things as they are and making decisions calmly, without fear or ego.
Street-Level Strategies for Sales Pros
Get neutral first. Negative self-talk is a sign you’re in the wrong mindset. Ask three questions to reset:
- Am I doing my best?
- Do I accept myself?
- Do I believe this ends well?
“For you as a sales pro, the easiest way for you to do that is recognize you’re negative or critical in your self-talk,” Tim Ohai suggests at 17:01.
From there, apply the best practices: clarity, empowerment, engagement, accountability, and culture. Leaders should clarify whether disruption or optimization is the priority—teams can’t do both at once.
“Am I supposed to generate disruption or minimize it? Because I can’t do both at the same time,” Tim Ohai says at 20:15.
Sales Success Starts with Clarity
Strategic execution isn’t just about great plans—it’s about creating an environment for sound decisions, building clarity at every step, and empowering teams to act. Sellers who embrace this approach create lasting value, not just one-off wins.
As Mark wrapped up: When sales pros help customers gain clarity and confidence, they don’t just land deals—they empower organizations for long-term success. Strategic execution, at its core, is about elevating both sales and leadership to a higher standard.
Mark Hunter :
So you think you know what strategic execution is? Hey, what would you say if I told you that 95% of your employees don’t even know what your strategy is? Yeah, that’s right. And how does that impact sales? It impacts sales dramatically. With me today is the author of the book the Zen of Strategic Execution. I’m Mark Hunter, the sales hunter. Why am I talking? Let’s get the show going. Right now you’re listening to the Sales Hunter podcast with Mark Hunter where the focus is to help you as a sales manager sell with confidence and integrity. And now, here’s your host. My guest has done more than I could ever imagine doing.
Mark Hunter :
He’s been with Shell, Microsoft, Walmart, Workday Leaders trust him for his blend of business be best business, best practices and psychological truths to drive high performance execution. He holds a master’s degree in industrial organization. That already makes him smarter than me. He’s the author of Zen of Strategic Execution. He’s got a host of other things that we’ll get to, but. Hey, Tim Ohai. Welcome to the show.
Tim Ohai :
Hey, Aloha, Marcus. So good to be here.
Mark Hunter :
And you say that because you live in Hawaii.
Tim Ohai :
I am a keiki oka ina. This is my home for sure.
Mark Hunter :
I love it. I love. Okay, so let’s talk about the book the Zen of Strategic Execution. I’m going to. I’m going to go right in right now because you talk about how confusion is very expensive and it starts with the strategy. People just don’t know strategy. Unpack that. And how does that drive sales or how does that hurt sales?
Tim Ohai :
Great question. And I’ll begin. My journey into strategic execution actually began in sales. I had a global role at Shell and I consistently saw the strategy bogging down for the sales organization, especially when you start talking about sales and marketing and their alignment. And it didn’t matter what country, it didn’t matter what line of business. I was supporting five different downstream B2B motions and every single one had the same problem. And it was this idea that everything looks great on paper until people get involved. And that’s actually why I got the degree.
Mark Hunter :
Okay, so should we just eliminate people then?
Tim Ohai :
Okay, there you go. So everybody wants to do these plans. And the problem is strategy is not a planning exercise. That’s probably the biggest myth that’s out there. We’ve all been taught, work your plan, get a plan. How are we doing against the plan? Henry Mintzberg out of Montreal came up with a definition of strategy that I think is mind altering. And that’s this it’s that strategy is a series of decisions we make in order to achieve a targeted outcome. So the idea that strategy is a decision making discipline should lead into the idea that so is execution.
Tim Ohai :
Eisenhower said, plans are worthless, but planning is everything. So the idea of thinking it through is great, but once you’ve thought it through, go do it. And that is sales. Sales is all about, you can’t plan the next quarter. You certainly can’t plan end of year. You just need to get out there and do it and make adjustments as you go. So my big aha moment was when I was talking to leaders and asking them, so who taught you how to execute strategy? The most common answer I get, no one. Everything’s trial and error.
Tim Ohai :
Everything’s trial and error. So I sat there, how do I help our sales leaders execute strategy? And then over my career of decades, it grew into every leader has essentially the same answer. So how do we help all of these leaders figure out how to execute strategy?
Mark Hunter :
Okay, because you’ve got such a wealth of experience in sales enablement, you were one of, really one of the early players in that space and really helped, really helped develop it with so many different companies. So the impact of this, I’m thinking, on the sales call itself that we don’t even know. And there was something that you shared in your book about NASA, right? Total loss, what? $326 million?
Tim Ohai :
Yeah, yeah.
Mark Hunter :
And everybody’s pointing fingers. And then what was the problem? Go ahead and tell the audience.
Tim Ohai :
So it was, it was a Marge project. And, and they had, I mean, you can imagine a NASA project, the amount of time it takes just to get to launch. Then they send their rover or exploratory device to Mars, and as it starts to land, it just falls apart. It just goes dark. And they lost over 300 million bucks in seconds because one team used metric and the other team used imperial centimeters versus inches.
Mark Hunter :
Okay, stop right there. I can imagine how long did it take for them to figure out that was the problem?
Tim Ohai :
I don’t have that answer. But I do know it was a famous moment of everybody’s freaking out. And then a typical government, you know, after action review, they’re trying to diagnose. And when it finally came to the moment, like, wait a minute, we were talking numbers, but nobody decided to actually get clear on what our numbers meant. How often does that happen in sales?
Mark Hunter :
It happens all the time. Because I see salespeople trying to diagnose a customer problem with, when that really isn’t the problem.
Tim Ohai :
That’s right.
Mark Hunter :
Now, how do salespeople, because again, you wrote the book the Zen of Strategic Execution. How do salespeople make sure that they’re focused on the right problem that the customer has?
Tim Ohai :
Well, so let’s start with the way the model works and there’s two core elements to it. One is the business best practices. That is essentially five elements that have to be done in order, in order for execution to thrive. The culprits that we all know, we all know about culture, we know about accountability. Those get talked about all the time. But if, if I want a great culture, I need to make sure I have accountability, healthy, trust based accountability first. So now there’s a bit of a sequence going on. So if in order for me to have a great culture, I need great accountability, but if I want great accountability, I need great engagement.
Tim Ohai :
Engagement is people believing that I want to be here, I want to do this job. It’s that motivation, that drive that says this is good for the company and it’s good for me. So if I want great engagement though, I have to empower people. I have to give them what they need to be successful in the role that they have. Because if they’re not empowered, they won’t engage and the accountability I get will be fear based and the culture I get will be toxic. But before I do any of that, the most essential element is clarity. What does success look like? What are our priorities? What are our goals and roles supposed to be doing? Because if I have clarity now, my empowerment does more than just generate waste. From a seller’s perspective, you need to come alongside and not solve problems.
Tim Ohai :
If you want to do anything, show how you can help that company improve their execution, you’re either going to generate more clarity, you’re going to generate more empowerment, you’re going to generate more engagement, you’re going to generate more accountability, and you ultimately might and shift their culture. But that’s, that is true consultative selling, in my opinion.
Mark Hunter :
Wow, okay. You just unpacked a lot there. And I see this applying regardless whether or not I’m selling a service or a physical product. I mean, I absolutely see this because I’m really sensing that I can’t begin to get clarity until myself, the salesperson and you, the customer are on the same page. Which means there has to be a level of transparency that takes place there. Now, when did the two sides have to get on the same page from a strategy standpoint? Because I think they do have to be on the same page. How, how and when does that happen?
Tim Ohai :
So, so that that element of the discussion should happen right from the very beginning. And the question I usually use is some form of what does success look like? What are you trying to achieve? What are you trying to either solve or grow or become or whatever? Um, and if they’re good, if there’s, it’s a gold classic line. If there’s no problem, there’s no sell. So I want to get clarity on that problem. But more importantly, I want to get clarity on the problem and the path that we’re going to take. Because a lot of sellers just stop. They listen for that buzzword. Bingo.
Tim Ohai :
I heard a problem. Okay, here’s my solution. Stop. What’s the path they’re on? Because if you’re not clear about the path they’re on, you’re a, you’re not going to be able to follow along with them and B, you’re not going to be able to be of any value while they try to navigate it.
Mark Hunter :
Okay, you just, you just called out the elephant in the room because the salesperson here. Oh, this is what they need. Boom. They go, they rush, they rush in with the solution to the burning building that’s not even on fire.
Tim Ohai :
That’s right. And more importantly, they’re now hijacking that conversation and ruining any chemistry that could be built.
Mark Hunter :
So really, not only are they killing that sale, but they’re killing any potential downs downstream sale.
Tim Ohai :
That’s right. Because our goal number one is not to solve the problem, is to create a great decision making environment. That is the Zen of strategic execution.
Mark Hunter :
Would you say that again? Because that was pretty powerful.
Tim Ohai :
Yeah. So our goal is not actually to solve the problem, it’s to create a great decision making environment. Because if I can create a great decision making environment, the chances of the problem going away or at least getting smaller are high. But if I skip over that step and I shoot after, I’m going to solve your goal, I’m going to solve your challenge, I’m going to address whatever it is you’re trying to do, but I don’t address the decision making environment itself. How many sellers have gotten 2/3 of the way through the buying cycle only to have the deal stall out because a new stakeholder who wasn’t identified earlier got brought in or because there was a change in senior leadership and priorities have adjusted or whatever. So all those things impact how decisions are made. And so I want to be helping my partner in this experience build. I love the way Brett Adamson talks about confidence.
Tim Ohai :
I want to build their confidence not just in me, but in their ability to make great decisions.
Mark Hunter :
Well I think that comes down to the fact that we have to be on the, on the buyer’s journey and they’re not going to buy until they feel absolutely confident.
Tim Ohai :
That’s right.
Mark Hunter :
But again it comes back to that. We spend all of our time because we want to execute the sale fast. Because management’s beating us up, beating us up. Close the sale now, get onto the next, get onto the next, get on the next one. And all we’re doing is leaving behind bloody carcasses.
Tim Ohai :
Well, and take that analogy. Now take it internally. Be a senior sales leader. This is the world I play in now. I’m a CRO. I’ve got pressure from my CEO, maybe the board on we have got to hit this new target of growth or this new level of roachi or this level of CAGR or whatever acronym you’re going to throw out. And I am now going to put pressure on my team to do things that normally without that pressure I would never ask them to do. So now what is happening is as a senior leader I’m now creating that field of broken bodies that we just talked about with my own people, my own team and they’re struggling to keep up and all I’m doing is burning them out and chewing them up and spitting them out and recruiting for more.
Tim Ohai :
And maybe AI will replace them. I don’t know. I’m desperate because I’ve got this pressure to hit this number that I have not done anything to create a great decision making environment. I just keep telling everybody to go follow the plan.
Mark Hunter :
And as the leader’s behavior rolls down, so too then that person down below takes that same be. It just becomes a compounding effect.
Tim Ohai :
Absolutely.
Mark Hunter :
I, I’ve always said isn’t amazing how our kids turn out like us. Whoa, that’s scary. That’s a scary proposition. But more importantly what I see is I see salespeople turning out like their managers.
Tim Ohai :
That’s exactly right. And we promote, we promote that. I’ll call it bad DNA. Yeah, we keep, we keep doing the same thing over and over. But then by the time they get to that SVP or EVP level at sales at least there’s an 18 month expiration date. That’s the average tenure. On the data I saw most, most senior leaders in sales only last 18 months because the grinder spits them out and they reload with somebody else.
Mark Hunter :
That is absolutely. So it just per. It. It just becomes perpetual bad behavior?
Tim Ohai :
That’s right.
Mark Hunter :
Okay, so now how do we break this Cycle. Because I want to come back to something you were talking about. If we figure out really the process, then it just things, everything else begins to fall into place.
Tim Ohai :
Well, that’s half of it.
Mark Hunter :
Oh, wait a minute, there’s more, there’s more. Unpack.
Tim Ohai :
Yeah. So I said the first part of this or the half of this is the as best practices and there are things you can do and we can crack into those best practices at any moment here. The book goes into them in great detail and explains all this. But at the, I call it the wheel, the execution wheel. The wheel spins or revolves around what’s happening in our heads and in our hearts. So the very first thing we have to do is recognize what are we doing to inject fear and bias into our decision making. And that’s a resort of ego and fear. I call it the eagle fear loop.
Tim Ohai :
Ego distorts and fear stops. And I can tell you that historically, for decades, it doesn’t matter if I’m talking to Walmart leaders, I’m talking to Shell leaders, I’m talking to startups in Sacramento, California or even the townships of South Africa with brand new entrepreneurs who are trying to do something the first time. What’s happening in here and here, their head and their heart is the battlefield that must be conquered first. And if you do that, then we can start doing these business best practices and even bringing them to our clients and helping them walk through the same steps without ego and fear getting in the way.
Mark Hunter :
Okay, you touched on something that I want to get into because I have a feeling some of your philosophies comes out of the fact that you’re the co founder of Ubuntu Mission, a non profit teaching leadership and entrepreneurship in Africa. Am I, am I right in saying that, that, that your work there has
Tim Ohai :
helped shape this here 1000%? When, when we, when we first started Ubuntu, we recognized that poverty has two heads. One is a lack of resources, but the other is this energy thing that’s going on between the head and the heart. And this is why I see a lot of charities with good intentions wasting a lot of money because they’re not addressing the decision making that’s happening with the resources that have been given. So like, you and I have talked offline about the work you’ve done in Africa with water and the projects that were so important to you that you saw that are still running in very, very tough environments are sustainable because you, you empowered and you’ve got local people involved doing the work. And it wasn’t outsiders coming in because you said it needs to be a head and heart thing, not just here’s the equipment thing. That’s, that’s absolutely why I call it the Zen of strategic execution. Because the essence of what we’re talking about begins internally, and then it extends outwardly. So there’s always self awareness, which leads to self mastery, so that you can create situational awareness and.
Tim Ohai :
And then generate situational mastery.
Mark Hunter :
Okay, I’m a salesperson. I’m listening to this. My head is starting to spin. It’s like, whoa, Give me some practical tips, practical strategies that I can put into play and then translate it to the sales leader or even go up to the CRO. So give us two sets of things that, you know, street level and further up the food chain. What. What they can be doing.
Tim Ohai :
Well, let’s start with the psychological. So the phrase I use is get neutral first. Most of us get into our loops because we get negative or critical. That’s actually the first sign that you’re in the wrong part of your brain. The right part of your brain, the prefrontal cortex, is where you have all your problem solving, your personality, your jokes, your humor. All of that stuff comes from the front part of your brain. As soon as you will go into fear mode, that emotion base, you’re retreating from that zone and going to your amygdala, which is survival mode, and you’re no longer making good decisions. So the first thing you have to do is be aware.
Tim Ohai :
Am I neutral or not? And I mean neutral. I don’t mean Pollyanna positive. I mean neutral. I see things as they are. Some things are good, some things aren’t. That’s cool. I’m not going to freak out about it and think of that champion athlete who can go to the moment. And it’s fourth quarter and they’re about to.
Tim Ohai :
The game’s all on the line. It’s the world championship or whatever sport you want to talk about. And they’re cool, calm, and collected. Why? Because they’re in that state of flow. So for you as a sales pro, the easiest way for you to do that is one, recognize your negative or critical in your self. Talk as soon as you hear that, that the only way you could be negative or critical is if you’re in your amygdala. Your prefrontal cortex is curious. It asks questions, but it’s not negative or critical.
Tim Ohai :
Second thing, three questions I want you to ask yourself. Number one, am I doing my best? On a scale of 1 to 10, how good am I? Right now against my best. Because my best is all I can do. It’s not about success or failure. It’s about showing up the best way, the best version of you. And then if you’re a 6, great, don’t try to be a 10. What would it take right now to be a 7? What would it take to raise my score by one point? Get yourself calm enough to be able to say, okay, this deal is not going well. I just had a lousy meeting with that client or whatever, or the email I just got is freaking me out.
Tim Ohai :
Take a breath. Are you doing your best? What can you do right now to raise your score? 1 point. Question 2. Do you accept yourself? This is a hard one, especially for the people pleasers out there, because we’re constantly looking for that feedback from our customers, from that feedback from our boss, feedback from our peers. Hey, you’re great. You’re doing awesome. We love you. Do you love yourself? Because if you can love yourself, then you can extend.
Tim Ohai :
You’re not worried about other people’s opinion because you’re doing your best. You love yourself. Again, scale of 1 to 10, what can you do to raise yourself one point? Third question. Do you believe this ends well? Do you trust the journey right now may be a dark chapter. You may have just lost the biggest sale of your career. That doesn’t mean the next chapter doesn’t have an even bigger deal. If you can make peace with the journey, that there’s highs and there’s lows, but it does end well. Not only well, it ends great.
Tim Ohai :
Every one of us has a fantastic ending to our story just waiting to be revealed. So we want to position ourselves to enjoy that journey, to fill it with faith, to fill it with hope, and to allow ourselves that sense of peace that comes from. Again, scale of 1 to 10, raise yourself one point. So if I can do those three things, and I call it confidence, acceptance, and trust, now I’m neutral. And if I’m neutral, ha. I’m going to show up differently. I’m going to make different decisions. And now I can start applying business best practices.
Tim Ohai :
Let me just pause there, let you react, Mark.
Mark Hunter :
That is huge. That is huge. Just getting comfortable because you’re right, we’ve all lost deals. I mean, we lose far more deals than we get. That’s just the nature of sales, period.
Tim Ohai :
That’s right.
Mark Hunter :
And you can start beating yourself up pretty quickly. And now you’re. Now you’re no longer neutral. You are no longer neutral, but you’re coming at it from a negative standpoint. And then it just becomes a downward spiral. I sense managers can get in that same mode either.
Tim Ohai :
External CEOs mark those same three questions. With CEOs, that is, that’s core human stuff. And I go deeper into it in my book, in chapter 26, I go deep into the ego fear loop. But this is. And I tell people, read this chapter first. Don’t wait to read to the end, just Skip to chapter 26. But the bottom.
Mark Hunter :
Now you tell.
Tim Ohai :
Yeah, exactly. But. But the reality is that is for everybody, it doesn’t matter. Roll. But then, then. Now let’s roll over to the business best practices. The first thing I want to do to generate clarity is get a sense of the scope of disruption. And I’ll.
Tim Ohai :
As a seller, I’ll just ask my boss, am I supposed to generate disruption or minimize it? Because I can’t do both at the same time. You tell me, am I supposed to be transforming things or am I supposed to be optimizing? Am I supposed to be going into my CRM and cleaning, or am I supposed to be chasing down new deals? Because I need to know what the priority is. And if I’m not clear on that, if it’s both at the same time, there are two completely different skill sets, two completely different mindsets, two completely different sets of activities. I cannot do both. And that’s usually right. There is a problem with most organizations. As a senior leader, you need to go to your executive suite and ask, are we optimizing or transforming this quarter? What’s our goal? Because I need to get my entire sales organization aligned. And if we’re optimizing, then, then I’m going to tell them it’s get ready to maybe not hit bonus or I don’t know what it’s going to be.
Tim Ohai :
Depends on how real I want to be. Because I’ve seen that. I’ve seen it where people are going, if we do this, we’re not going to hit our number. I know, but we have to do this for the sake of the company. But we’ll come back hard next quarter and I’ll do everything I can to double down. And do you play the games? I’ve seen them all. But the reality is if I can’t be neutral while I’m being asked to do those things, I won’t do those things.
Mark Hunter :
Man, there’s so much in the book, the Zen of strategic Execution. Tim Ohio has been our guest. Hey, you’re also the host of how to Not Execute your strategy podcast. I love that term.
Tim Ohai :
Thank you.
Mark Hunter :
And you’re also the co author. Yeah, exactly. And you’re also co author of World Class Selling, Sales Chaos and the Power of Problems. Absolutely fantastic. Okay, the book, the book is the Zen of Strategic Execution. How do people find it? How do people get in touch with you besides visit the mountaintop in Hawaii?
Tim Ohai :
Yeah, come to Hawaii and we’ll have a coffee. A Kona coffee. No, just, just go on Amazon for the book. I made it really easy. Just go on Amazon. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a dot com, a dot DE or a dot IT it doesn’t matter. It’s there. And then if you want to contact me, just go to Timohi.com and you’ll find how to contact me or consume any of my my insights or even join the community.
Mark Hunter :
I love that. And that’s t I m O h A I dot com. Correct. I love it. Tim, thank you for being with us. I tell you what, if you weren’t in the green room, because nobody was except for just two of us, we had a great conversation because again, our paths have crossed yet we haven’t crossed. So absolutely fantastic. You’re going to be back on the show again.
Mark Hunter :
Hey, I do two episodes a week, one like this, where we do a deep dive with a subject matter expert. Tim certainly filled that book, certainly filled that bill. That’s why you got to buy his book, the Zen of Strategic Execution. And second episode is just me where I unpack a single topic. 2 shows all designed to help you see and achieve what you didn’t think was possible. Do me a favor, leave me a review after you have bought Tim’s book. Buy his book first. And of course, while you’re at it, go ahead and pick up my new book, Integrity.
Mark Hunter :
First selling. Hey, I’m Mark Hunter, sales Hunter. Great selling.
Tim Ohai :
Thank you.
