Over the past few months, we’ve spoken with dozens of COOs, CHROs, and CEOs about one challenge: execution.
We knew this challenge well from our work in the field. But as expectations for growth reached a new level, we kept hearing the same frustration, and decided to investigate it more deeply.
The words are different, but the feeling is the same:
“We used to move so fast. What happened to us?”
In the early days, founders are everywhere.
They know every employee. They interview every candidate. They join customer calls, review the product, solve problems, and make decisions, sometimes all on the same day.
Everyone does whatever is needed. There are few boundaries and even fewer processes, but somehow it works.
At around 50 employees, things begin to change. A little more structure is needed, but the company can still rely on people jumping in wherever they are needed.
At 100 or 150 employees, the founders build a management team. Roles become clearer. Processes start to appear.
And then the company reaches 250 or 300 employees.
This is where many founders describe a very different feeling:
“I’m no longer sure I know what is really happening in my company.”
They no longer know everyone who joins. They are no longer part of every important conversation. Decisions are made several layers away from them.
And slowly, without anyone deciding that it should happen, the company begins to feel different.
One of the companies we spoke with has around 470 employees. An executive there told us:
“In the beginning, we were executors. No one could beat us.”
Then came the painful part.
Today, ownership has become fluid. Decisions move between people and teams. Everyone is involved, but nobody is completely sure who should decide.
The company is still full of talented and committed people, yet it is no longer moving at the speed it once did.
That conversation stayed with me.
Because this is not a story about bad management or weak employees.
It is what happens when a company grows faster than its way of working.
And in the past few months, I have seen just how painful that gap can become.
One company told us it was hiring around 30 people every month. When you are growing at that speed, who has time to stop and design the perfect structure?
You keep hiring. You keep selling. You keep delivering.
Then one day, you look around and realize that you have 700 or 1,000 employees, and the way you used to run the company no longer works.
You have a strategy. You have a work plan. You have KPIs.
At the end of the month, you open the dashboard.
Some numbers are green.
Others are red.
And that is when the investigation begins.
Why did we miss the target? Where did execution break? Was ownership unclear? Were teams working toward different priorities? Did a decision get stuck somewhere?
But by then, the month is already over.
That red KPI is not helping you manage the work. It is telling you what already went wrong.
This is the question I have been thinking about constantly:
How can leadership see execution challenges while they are forming - not one month later?
The usual answer is to add more structure: consultants, processes, organizational changes, workshops, mentoring, and new measurement systems.
Some of that may be necessary.
But our breakthrough over the past few months was realizing how much of this, AI may be able to do continuously and consistently (btw, this is the real challenge) using the information (not the data!!!) and workforce companies already have.
Not another dashboard.
Not another report telling management what happened last month.
Something that can identify unclear ownership, stalled decisions, and gaps between strategy and daily work while there is still time to do something about them.
We are still learning, and that is why I would genuinely love to hear from founders and leaders who have lived through this stage.
When did you first feel that you were losing visibility into your company? And what became hardest to project as you grew: speed, ownership, alignment or culture?
P.S. Some companies are currently going through the opposite journey—rapid contraction. The challenges there may be even more painful, but that is a story for another post.
#Execution #ScalingUp #OperationalExcellence #Leadership #AIinBusiness