Making sense of slow progress.

2026 offers a fresh start. But first, reflect on your opportunities for growth.

I see a common pattern across organizations that want to grow.

These are capable teams. Strong leaders. Solid products. Loyal customers. In many cases, a long-earned reputation for quality and reliability.

And yet—growth feels harder than it should.

There are ideas on the table. Initiatives underway. But progress feels slow and fragmented. Not because people aren’t trying—but because the organization isn’t designed to carry ideas all the way from insight to impact.

This isn’t a failure of ambition or intelligence. It’s a structural gap.

Where growth actually gets stuck

When growth stalls in smart organizations, it’s rarely for a single reason. It’s usually the accumulation of several structural and cultural patterns that make forward motion harder over time. Here are a few I see most often.

1. Past success blocks new insights.

What you’ve done in the past has worked. That success is real and well-earned. But it also quietly becomes the filter through which new ideas are judged. Too much confidence in current methods can be a risk if it’s not balanced with curiosity about gaps and opportunities. Multigenerational teams often feel this tension but can’t name it.

New opportunities get compared to existing products. New customer needs get overshadowed by old assumptions. Risk is evaluated based on what might disrupt what already works. Basically, the status quo is more comfortable.

This makes sense, but it also makes it very difficult to see what customers need next—or how value creation is changing around you.

2. Innovation is important -but without structure, it doesn’t happen.

In many organizations, innovation is treated as something extra. Like a side project, a task force, or a pilot. Something to pursue when the time is right.

Meanwhile, the day-to-day work—serving customers, meeting targets, keeping operations running—always wins.

Many leaders know innovation is necessary, but they’re unsure how to integrate it, manage it, and make it pay off. Sometimes the urgency to ‘do something’ causes teams to push forward in the wrong ways, which can set back progress even further.

Innovation is change, and change needs structure.

3. Sales and operations are solving different problems.

Sales hears customers asking for new solutions and works to meet those requests.

Operations focuses on efficiency, margins, and feasibility, aiming not to overpromise.

Both perspectives are valid—but without a shared plan, they might end up working against each other. When aligned around a common understanding of how to evolve together, teams can reduce friction in the customer experience and even create premium value.

Without that alignment, good ideas exist—but they don’t move forward cohesively. Execution gets stuck between functions, and growth efforts become diffused and slow.

4. The messy middle layer - where ideas flourish or fizzle.

Many organizations are good at two things:

• Generating ideas or insights at the leadership level

• Delivering existing products and services reliably

What often gets overlooked is the “middle layer”—the messy space where ideas need time to mature and develop. They need to be chunked into actionable pieces that are value-tested with customers and receive collaborative input across internal departments. This sort of rapid experimentation doesn’t always come naturally—especially in organizations where excellence and precision are foundational values.

But, without attention to this key developmental stage, teams end up with promising ideas that don’t go anywhere, pilot projects that don’t scale, and frustration that “we tried, but it didn’t work.”

The opportunity that emerges

What often stalls growth isn’t a lack of ideas or execution. It’s a lack of space to create insights and alignment.

Space to look objectively at what’s really happening - internally and externally.

Dialogue to process how needs are changing—usually much faster than people realize.

A forum to get creative about new ways to create value, not just optimize existing ones.

And a plan that breaks progress into smaller, testable steps that reduce risk instead of amplifying it.

Most organizations don’t struggle because they’re standing still. They struggle because they’re moving—often rather fast—but not in the same direction.

The path forward

When growth is stuck, the answer usually isn’t a bigger plan or more initiatives.

The answer is clarity.

Clarity about the audiences that could lead to growth and the problems worth solving. Clarity about where the organization is unintentionally getting in its own way. Clarity about which assumptions need to be tested—not just internally debated.

And often, that clarity comes more easily with an objective guide—someone who can identify patterns, ask better questions, and break complexity into manageable next steps.

Not to dictate answers. But to help the organization see itself more clearly.

A question worth sitting with

If growth feels harder than it should right now, it may be worth asking:

How have ideas gotten stuck in the past?

The answer is rarely simple. But noticing the pattern is often the first meaningful step forward.

If you want to explore different ways you could create space for clarity and alignment, please reach out for a chat.