Growth Doesn’t Always Feel Good
In theory, hitting new revenue milestones should come with clarity, momentum, and a high-five or two. But in practice, the behind-the-scenes often tells a different story:
- Teams stretched thin, chasing priorities that keep shifting
- Leadership time eaten up by internal firefighting
- Great ideas stalling out in the execution gap
- Revenue growth masking deeper delivery or capacity problems
It’s not that you’re doing something wrong. You’ve likely outgrown what used to work, and no one pressed pause to realign the foundation.
“Strategy” Alone Won’t Save You
Let’s name it: strategy is one of the most overused and misunderstood words in business.
I’ve seen companies pour time and money into planning cycles, only to realize no one can follow through because systems, capacity, or decision-making norms haven’t caught up to the plan.
Real strategy doesn’t live in a Notion doc. It shows up in how you make decisions, assign resources, and structure your operations every day.
If those decisions feel inconsistent, reactive, or dependent on a few exhausted leaders, strategy isn’t the problem. Not having it grounded in operational reality probably is.
Alignment isn’t a luxury. It’s what makes your strategy executable.
How Smart Businesses End Up Stuck
The companies I work with aren’t broken. They’re run by brilliant people who care deeply about their work, their teams, and their customers.
But brilliance doesn’t protect you from bottlenecks. Here are four patterns I’ve seen across industries and growth stages:
1. Your business has scaled, but your structure hasn’t.
You’ve added clients, revenue, or headcount. But processes are duct-taped, expectations are murky, and everyone’s doing their best with limited context. Team capacity gets misread as a performance issue. Communication breaks down. Good people burn out trying to “figure it out.”
2. You’ve outgrown your original delivery model.
What worked when you had five clients or a scrappy team doesn’t hold up at scale. Quality control slips. Margins shrink. Client experience becomes inconsistent. You may not need a rebrand—you might just need to rebuild the engine that delivers your value.
3. Your data isn’t telling you the truth.
I once worked with a team that thought their pipeline was solid, until we pressure-tested it and realized 40 percent of projected revenue was ghosting the sales team. Attribution was a mess. CRM hygiene was optional. When your inputs are unreliable, your decisions will be too.
4. Your org structure encourages over-functioning.
In some companies, a small group of leaders is carrying an outsized load—making decisions, unblocking teams, and absorbing all the ambiguity. That might work short-term, but long-term it stalls leadership development and keeps your business dependent on the same handful of people.
What You Think Is the Problem… Often Isn’t
Most founders or execs spin out when they identify a symptom, like “we need better project management,” and chase a surface-level solution i.e. buy new software, hire a contractor, redo a workflow.
But the real issue might be:
- You never defined who owns the outcome
- Priorities are changing without being based on a decision filter
- There’s no clean handoff between sales and post-sales or delivery
- Your team’s incentive structure isn’t aligned with success—not for your customers, not for your team, and not for the business
This is what I mean when I challenge people to gain diagnostic clarity first & foremost. You can’t fix what you haven’t accurately named.
So, How Do You Fix What’s Not Working?
You step back and get brutally honest about what’s slowing you down.
That might sound obvious, but it’s one of the hardest things to do inside your own business. Especially when you’re busy, committed, and surrounded by people who are also moving fast.
Here’s what I’ve found actually works:
Stop solving for symptoms
Look for root patterns: miscommunication, misaligned incentives, outdated assumptions. The go-to ask: “What’s happening underneath this problem?”
Bring in a neutral lens
You don’t need a 6-month consulting engagement. Sometimes you just need someone who can see the system clearly, without your internal bias. That’s what I do.
Make decisions that hold
Once you have clarity, act on it. Clean up ownership. Redraw boundaries. Nix the thing that’s draining resources. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be honest and aligned.
A Real Example: Fixing the Right Problem in a Growth-Stage Org
A COO at a growth-stage company came to me frustrated. Her team was overwhelmed, delivery was inconsistent, and internal trust was starting to erode.
The assumption? They had a resourcing or workflow issue.
What we uncovered: sales incentives were misaligned with operational reality.
Deals were being closed with unrealistic timelines. Internal handoffs were fuzzy at best. Leadership was constantly firefighting.
In a focused diagnostic session, we pressure-tested assumptions across their pipeline, CRM, and team structure. Then we rebuilt the prioritization framework and mapped a new decision structure that reflected actual capacity.
Within weeks:
- Delivery timelines stabilized
- Communication friction dropped across functions
- They avoided a costly hire by realigning scope and sales expectations
That’s the impact of solving the right problem, not just the loudest one.
Why This Matters Now
Midyear is one of the best moments to course-correct.
If you wait until Q4, urgency takes over. Everyone’s sprinting to close out goals. Client load ramps up. Capacity to recalibrate disappears.
You don’t need to blow everything up. But you do need to stop the bleeding and build smarter going forward.
Ready to Get Clear?
If you’re leading a business or team and know something feels off, I offer a focused engagement built for exactly this.
Fix What’s Not Working Workshop
A comprehensive 2-hour problem-solving session where we identify your biggest bottlenecks and build your exact plan to fix them.
- Pre-session questions so we don’t waste time
- 2-hour focused, hands-on intensive strategy session
- Detailed Step-Back-and-Architect Map (2-3 days post-session)
- 1-week implementation support via email or WhatsApp
Flat rate: $1,200
→ Book your session or → Schedule a Discovery Call
No retainer. No fluff. Just clarity that moves the needle now.
You Can’t Scale Through Misalignment
Every smart leader I know hits this point eventually. Not because they’re failing, but because they’re growing.
Scaling through misalignment leads to unnecessary chaos, expensive mistakes, talented people walking out the door, and broken trust with customers.
Fix what’s not working.
Protect your time, your energy, and the business you’re building.
