Pattern 02
Unclear Priorities
What feels obvious in leadership never becomes explicit enough for the wider organisation to know and act on.
Founder feeling
“I feel like the team is always busy, but not on the things that matter most.”
What quietly stopped scaling
At smaller size, priorities spread naturally. People overheard founder conversations, sat close to decisions, and strategy travelled through proximity. If priorities shifted, everyone usually knew by Friday.
As companies grow, that stops scaling. What feels obvious in leadership often never becomes explicit enough for the wider organisation to execute consistently. People no longer share the same context by default.
The company quietly outgrows: “Everyone just knows what matters.”
What this often looks like
- Frustration with pace
- Frequent re-prioritisation
- Work happening that doesn't feel connected to the core priorities
- • Different teams pulling in different directions
- • People working on things leadership no longer talks about
- • Teams feeling frustrated that priorities keep changing
- • Leaders feeling the organisation is “slow” to adapt
- • Repeated debates about what matters most
- • Good work happening, but not always on the right things
- • Teams pushing initiatives that no longer fit the strategy
The hidden dynamic
This is usually not resistance to the strategy or the priorities.
People are often working hard, but solving for different things because priorities, trade-offs, and especially what NOT to focus on have not been made explicit enough.
What also tends to happen is that strategy is moving faster than communication. Leadership updates its thinking continuously, but the organisation only sees fragments. Priorities are often clear in leadership’s head, but not explicit enough for the wider company to execute against.
And strategy is rarely clear enough about trade-offs: What are we actually prioritising? What are we intentionally not doing?
When those boundaries are unclear, teams start inventing a strategy themselves.
What you can do about it
You cannot overcommunicate clarity. Strategy and direction is not a one-off, it's a continous task and it needs to be repeated many more times and more often than you think.
This is where your operating model should really come into play: what information is shared, with whom, in what whay and when?
Example: every friday the exec team (e.g. CEO, CCO, CTO) have a leadership meeting. They discuss, problem solve, decide. They end with the question: "does anybody else need to know this?". After than meeting, each person briefs their leadership team (or their direct team, if the company is smaller), who will then brief their respective teams.
Monthly or quarterly, depending on your size & pace, the exec team should look each other in the eye, and ask: "have we changed our priorities or goals since the last time we did this?". If the answer is yes, you need to make sure the rest of the company knows as well.
A first exercise: Run a short leadership alignment session and answer: For the next 3 months: 1. What are our top 3 priorities? 2. What are we explicitly not prioritising? 3. What should people stop spending time on? Then communicate it clearly to the company.