Who’s in Your Pit Crew?   

Executive Summary  

As we move out of the summer lull and into the final stretch of the year, most leadership teams have no shortage of clarity on what Q4 needs to deliver. The targets are set. The plan is written. And yet, quarter after quarter, a significant proportion of those plans stall before December arrives. The problem is rarely the goal itself. It is what is, or isn’t, built around it: the people who challenge, support and advocate for you, and the structures that give you the capacity to actually execute. This article sets out both, and offers a practical way to check where your own gaps are before they cost you the quarter.

The Goals Were Never Really the Problem  

Research from the Economist Intelligence Unit, surveying 500 senior executives, found that nine in ten businesses fail to hit their stated objectives, quarter after quarter, year after year. Not because the objectives were unclear or overambitious, but because of what happens in the gap between setting the goal and actually delivering it, the gap between strategy design and execution.

That gap tends to widen precisely now. Energy is lower after the summer break. Budgets are under closer scrutiny. Every function is trying to close out the year at the same time, competing for the same finite attention. Most leaders respond by sharpening the goal itself: a clearer target, a tighter deadline, a more detailed plan. But a clearer goal doesn’t create the capacity to deliver it. What surrounds the goal does.

Nobody Crosses the Line Alone  

The most successful Formula One drivers in the world are never doing it alone. When the car pulls into the pit lane, an entire ecosystem springs into action: engineers, strategists, analysts, physios, mechanics. Every person has a role in helping the driver perform at their best, under pressure, with the clock running.

And yet, as leaders heading into Q4, many of us quietly try to be the driver and the entire pit crew at once. We set the strategy, chase the numbers, manage the team, hold the difficult conversations and absorb the pressure from above, often without pausing to ask who and what should be supporting us through it.

There are two questions worth separating here. Who is actually around you: the people who challenge your thinking, tell you the truth and open doors for you. And what is actually in place: the decisions, capacity and structures that let effort convert into delivery, rather than simply into longer hours.

Ask yourself:

→  If  someone challenged my Q4 plan honestly right now, who would actually do it?

→  Do  I know exactly what I could hand off this quarter, and have I genuinely handed it off?

→  Where  am I quietly relying on goodwill and long hours instead of a real structure?

The Four People Every Leader Needs Behind a Q4 Push  

Over the years of working with senior leaders, I’ve noticed that the strongest support systems tend to contain four distinct types of people.

1. Teachers 

The people you learn from. They expand your thinking and expose you to new ideas, whether that’s an industry expert, a piece of research, or simply a colleague whose perspective makes you think differently about a familiar problem.

2. Mentors 

The people you trust deeply enough to think out loud with. Honest, confidential conversations that help you untangle complexity and see your own blind spots, particularly useful when a Q4 target starts to wobble and you need perspective rather than reassurance.

3. Sponsors 

The people who advocate for you in rooms you’re not in. They see an opportunity, a resource, or a piece of political cover you need, and they act on it without being asked. These relationships are rarely transactional; they’re built over time, well before the quarter you need them.

4. Connectors 

The people who simply know people. When Q4 capacity gets tight, connectors are often how you find the extra pair of hands, the introduction, or the perspective from outside your own function that unblocks something internally.

The evidence for building this deliberately, rather than leaving it to chance, is strong. When Paychex ran a formal mentoring programme for its high-potential talent, 86% of participants went on to achieve their goals. Support of this kind is not a soft add-on to performance. It is one of the more reliable levers for it.

You don’t fail Q4 because your goals were wrong. You fail it because you tried to be the whole pit crew, as well as the driver.

The What: The Conditions That Let People Actually Deliver  

The right people around you will only take you so far if the structural conditions underneath them aren’t there. Research on strategy execution consistently finds that around seven in ten well-designed plans fail, not at the design stage, but at delivery: unclear decision rights, no protected capacity, and no feedback loop that catches drift early enough to correct it.

For most leaders heading into Q4, that shows up in familiar ways: a goal with no one clearly empowered to make the calls beneath it; a team with no genuine capacity because nothing was taken off their plate to make room; and no natural moment built in to step back and check whether the plan is still on track before it’s too late to change course.

This is worth treating as seriously as any other commercial decision. Building in decision rights, protected capacity and a mid-quarter checkpoint is not a well-being nicety. It is infrastructure, and it has a direct bearing on whether the numbers land.

Your Q4 Pit-Stop Check  

A simple structure to work through now, in the early weeks of Q4, rather than in December when the options have narrowed.

Now:  Map who is actually behind you. Name one teacher, one mentor, one sponsor and one connector currently active in your world. An empty box is your first gap, and the one most worth closing early.

Early in the quarter:  Name the structural blocker. What decision, resource or piece of cover is missing that would let this goal move without you personally pushing it every single day?

Mid-quarter:  Build in one deliberate moment to step back and ask what’s drifting, before it turns into a December scramble. Treat it as a fixed date, not something you’ll get to if time allows.

Before you close the year:  Protect the conversations that matter, with your own supporters and with your team, rather than letting them get swallowed by year-end delivery pressure.

 The Takeaway  

Q4 goals rarely fail for lack of ambition or clarity. They fail because leaders try to deliver them entirely on their own steam, without the people who challenge and support them, and without the structures that let effort actually convert into delivery. The leaders who close the year strongly are very rarely the ones working hardest in isolation. They are the ones who built a proper pit crew, and the conditions for that crew to do its job, before the pressure hit.

If you’d like support mapping who and what should be around you this quarter, whether that’s coaching support for you personally or building the structures your team needs to deliver, I’d love to talk. Get in touch with VB&A.

Victoria Buckenham 2026