Instead of the extremes of strategy execution I criticized last week, many organizations would benefit from a blended approach that combines entrepreneurship with execution. In small startup companies, successful entrepreneurs innovate, take risks, and solve problems as they arise. The same approach can work in big companies. “Entrepreneurial” acknowledges the need for local invention and risk-taking, but places it in a broader context of strategy execution. It presumes that all workers have something to add to the success of their organizations (and in this age of well-educated knowledge workers, it’s likely that they do). But in addition to innovation, high-performing organizations need some degree of alignment around strategic goals and objectives. Many aspects of this approach are similar to the strategy execution of Toyota, which is clearly the most successful automobile firm, and one of the world’s most successful companies. The contrasts among strategic engineering, strategic anarchy, and entrepreneurial execution are shown in the table below of the Three Approaches to Strategy Execution: