Imagine a startup with a clear strategy. It knows its ideal customer, it has a differentiated product, an experienced leadership team, and investors who believe in the plan.
The board signs off, and everyone leaves the meeting feeling optimistic. Six months later, growth has stalled, and people scramble to find the culprit.
Everyone is busy, nobody is executing the same strategy, and nobody is failing: how is that possible? Every department is doing exactly what it has been encouraged to do but is in fact executing a different strategy…
Most people immediately blame the strategy. Perhaps the positioning was wrong, or the pricing needs changing; maybe it’s time for another market, another product or another round of strategic workshops. Usually, they’re looking in the wrong place: most B2B startups don’t have a strategy problem, but an execution problem.
Poor execution, the REAL culprit
Strategy has never been easier to produce. Founders have access to AI, advisors, accelerators, books, podcasts and investors who willingly share frameworks. The real challenge, however, begins once the strategy leaves the boardroom; to quote Mike Tyson, “everyone has a strategy till they get punched in the face”.
Suppose the leadership team agrees that enterprise manufacturers are the priority. A few months later, someone looks at the pipeline and realises that most new enquiries still come from SMEs; this is because marketing kept doing what had always worked.
Sales followed the quickest route to revenue, product became increasingly influenced by the demands of existing customers, and customer success was reluctant to say no if a renewal depended on it. By that time, operations had adapted its processes to cope with all the exceptions.
That’s why execution matters: the organisation needs greater clarity, people should know what’s important, processes should support rather than obstruct, and issues should surface long before they become expensive.
Everyone is busy, nobody is executing the same strategy, and nobody is failing: how is that possible? Every department is doing exactly what it has been encouraged to do but is in fact executing a different strategy. This is why I often say that businesses execute their incentives, not the strategy.
Different strategies, more problems…
Once that happens, growth becomes unpredictable; customers receive conflicting messages; priorities compete with one another, and decisions slow down because nobody is sure which objective matters most.
More meetings are scheduled, more reports are requested, more people are hired, and very little actually improves…
It’s surprisingly easy to mistake movement for progress. Rewriting the strategy feels productive (and sometimes it is), but more often, the business simply hasn’t been executing the previous one consistently.
That’s why execution matters: the organisation needs greater clarity, people should know what’s important, processes should support rather than obstruct, and issues should surface long before they become expensive.
Execute for success
There’s another often-overlooked benefit: businesses that execute well tend to adapt more easily. With clear priorities and well-established ways of working, changing direction doesn’t create panic. It becomes another business decision rather than an organisational crisis.
The same applies to AI. Some founders hope it will compensate for weak processes or poor organisation. Technology tends to amplify whatever is already there: if the business is well run, the gains can be significant; if it isn’t, AI simply helps mistakes happen more efficiently.
So perhaps it is time to ask a different question.
The next time growth slows, don’t ask whether your strategy is wrong, but whether every part of your organisation is executing the same one. That answer is usually far more revealing.
About the author
Stefano Maifreni is an accomplished COO known for driving growth in Technology Manufacturing, Drones, IoT, AI, GreenTech, and Fin/InsureTech.
