It's Not Your Strategy. It's Not Your People
Feb 13, 2026
By Kayla Monroe
Every growing organization that I’ve worked with is different.
Yet I see the same patterns over and over again.
Revenue is up, opportunity is strong, but there's an underlying sense that growing shouldn't require this much effort.
Leaders often diagnose this as a strategy problem, a communication problem, or assume they need to hire more, do more training, or just work harder.
What's actually happening beneath the surface usually has nothing to do with any of that.
As organizations grow, the way decisions are made and reinforced stops matching what the business now requires.
Leaders compensate by staying closer, explaining more, intervening more often.
You don’t just walk into work one day and see that something has broken, but there are signs that tell you something needs to change.
What leaders notice:
Decisions take longer than they used to
What used to take days now takes a couple weeks
The CEO becomes a default escalation point
Smoothing conflict between leaders, disputes over priorities, course correcting execution
High performers are becoming frustrated
Due to lack of role clarity or decision rights, too many blockers, and stalled initiatives
Meetings multiply, clarity doesn’t
More time spent coordinating, less progress to show for it
Execution slows even as you add people
Progress becomes slow, political, and reactive.
That friction isn't random. It's showing up in a predictable pattern. More complexity requires more structure.
Most leaders respond by adding more communication, more check-ins, more oversight.
That's not a problem necessarily. It's just not where the leverage is.
When the way decisions are made, work flows, and teams collaborate hasn't evolved with the business, adding more coordination creates more activity without changing what's underneath.
Leaders start explaining more. Teams start coordinating more. Everyone ends up working harder.
The friction doesn't disappear. It just gets absorbed.
The cost:
- Senior leadership capacity gets consumed by operational coordination instead of strategic work.
- High performers spend time navigating unclear systems instead of executing.
- The organization stays dependent on individual intervention rather than developing the ability to move on its own.
The leverage is in the layer most leaders don't even realize they're skipping.
Not how hard the organization is working, but how the organization is designed to operate.
- How decisions are made and reinforced.
- Where authority lives.
- How priorities translate across teams.
When that layer evolves, the compensating behaviors become unnecessary. Not because leaders step back, but because the system stops requiring them to step in.
That's what the next issue is about.
Kayla Monroe
KAYLA MONROE COACHING + CONSULTING
Work With Kayla
I partner with CEOs and executive teams during growth and transition to evolve organizational infrastructure so decisions translate into consistent action.
The Two Most Common Ways to Work With Me:
Organizational Growth Diagnostic
A focused assessment that clarifies where infrastructure has lagged behind growth and what kind of intervention makes sense. Learn More
Strategic Growth Partnership
Ongoing advisory relationship for organizations navigating sustained growth, complexity, or transition. Learn More
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