A common frustration among my clients — my team isn’t moving fast enough, they’re not willing to grow, they’re getting in the way — reveals a fundamental misread. What leaders experience as hesitation, pushback, slower execution, plausible deniability and CYA tactics isn’t resistance.

It’s a structural gap and a signal.

The Signal

If you feel like you’re pushing and the organization is pushing back, there's a good chance that the business has outgrown its structure: roles are under-specified, decision rights are unclear, operating rhythms are inconsistent and the team is overextended.

When growth ramps up in this stage, the organization starts to fracture under the pressure. Execution quality drops, rework increases and people protect themselves by slowing down and seeking approval.

This is legitimately frustrating.

You're seeing the opportunities finally starting to pour in, ready to capture them, to ride the wave. This is what we've been waiting for! But the team doesn't seem to be showing up for it.

Despite what it looks like, this is not a motivation problem or a talent problem. It’s a signal that the business is being asked to grow faster than its structure can support and your team is seeing red flags where you're seeing dollar signs.

The Root Cause

In the scaling stage, growth pressure and organizational readiness are often out of sync.

In the early days, speed comes from proximity. Decisions are fast because everything runs through the founder. Coordination is informal and context lives in conversations.

As headcount increases and responsibilities are distributed, that same approach creates strain. Without clear roles, decision rights, operating rhythms and shared systems, parts start to fly off.

People slow down not because they don’t care or they’re not motivated, but because they’re trying to avoid breaking things, stepping on each other or making the wrong call.

The founder sees resistance. The team sees risk.

They know, from down in the trenches, that something’s gotta give or the whole thing’s gonna blow.

And they’re not wrong.

What’s required in this moment isn’t more pressure or another push for speed. It’s a calibration of expectations to the reality of what this stage actually demands. Going slow to go fast means intentionally slowing down long enough to build the systems, structure and scaffolding the business needs to scale to the next level.

Before you can push harder and go faster, you need to create space to do that foundational work -- to deliberately reallocate time and attention toward building what scale requires.

That’s what the next tool helps you do.

The Tool: The Stage Alignment Audit

This is not a time-management exercise. It’s a tool for deliberately rebalancing the organization’s effort so the work of building scale actually gets done.

The purpose of the Stage Alignment Audit is to make visible how the team’s time, attention and priorities are currently allocated and to create the space required to invest in the systems and structure this stage demands.

For one representative week (two if work varies significantly), map work at the team or function level across four categories:

1. Growth & Strategic Initiatives: Expansion efforts, new revenue streams, major bets tied to future growth.
2. Business-as-Usual (BAU): Core delivery, fulfillment, customer support and ongoing operational work.
3. Foundation & Infrastructure: Systems, documentation, role clarity, process definition, operating rhythms, onboarding, internal tooling, data hygiene.
4. Friction & Rework: Firefighting, workarounds, clarification loops, escalations, duplicate work, breakdowns at handoffs.

Don’t worry about being super precise -- this is more about pattern identification.

Healthy scale-stage organizations (~$1–30M) should hover around:

• Growth & Strategic Initiatives: 40–50%
• BAU: 20–30%
• Foundation & Infrastructure: 20–30%
• Friction & Rework: under 10%

If foundation work is materially below 20% while friction is high, the organization is not making enough room to build what scale requires.

If BAU is consuming most available capacity, there is no slack to absorb change without breaking something.

If growth initiatives are stacked without a corresponding increase in foundation investment, execution strain is inevitable.

This audit gives you a concrete way to slow down on purpose so the systems that make sustainable speed possible can be built.

The Technique: Align Expectations

The audit only works if it’s used to recalibrate priorities and expectations.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

Step 1: Run the audit at the team or function level

Don’t ask individuals to self-report.

Map work at the team or functional level so the conversation stays structural, not personal.

You are looking for patterns across the system, not explanations from individuals.

Step 2: Adjust the allocation to scale-stage ranges

Use this table to translate the audit into action. Compare current allocation to the scale-stage ranges, then apply the corresponding move.

Step 3: Name the constraint out loud

If foundation work is underfunded and friction is high, say it plainly:

This reframes the issue from performance to readiness.

Step 4: Make a conscious and explicit tradeoff

You cannot increase foundation work without freeing capacity.

Decide what slows down temporarily so structure can catch up.

This is a strategic choice, not a retreat.

Tell your leadership team what will look slower in the short term, and why.

If expectations remain implicit, people assume misalignment or failure.

Explicit expectations prevent quiet resistance and morale erosion.

Step 5: Define the intent… and time-box it

Be explicit with the team: you are not pausing growth. You are slowing down enough to work smarter instead of harder.

Just as important, define the boundaries of that slowdown.

Time-box the investment and manage it against milestones.

For example:

• a defined window (e.g., 60–90 days)
• clear outputs (SOPs completed, onboarding documented, workflows redesigned, decision rights clarified)
• a short list of systems being built or stabilized

This keeps foundation work focused and accountable.

The goal is not to “work on systems forever.” It’s to build what the next phase requires, then move on.

Step 6: Manage your own expectations deliberately

This is the part most founders underestimate.

Foundation work rarely feels productive in real time.

To avoid losing patience and prematurely re-accelerating, set a personal rule:

• Measure progress by structural outputs, not visible speed
• Expect discomfort and fewer visible wins during this phase.
• Remind yourself that impatience is a signal, not a directive

Many founders benefit from a simple check-in question:

This keeps you from reintroducing pressure that undermines the work.

Why It Works

At scale, outcomes are driven less by effort and more by how work is structured.

When expectations outpace organizational readiness, teams compensate by slowing down, double-checking decisions and mitigating risk, overly.

That behavior looks like resistance, but it’s actually an adaptive response to inadequate systems, shaky foundations and missing scaffolding.

Aligning expectations to what this stage actually requires creates the conditions for speed. When leaders accept the need to slow down long enough to build structure, the organization stops compensating for risk and starts building for scale.

Your Next Move

Is it possible that what you’ve been seeing as resistance is really the organization signaling it needs structure?

If you want help diagnosing where growth expectations and organizational readiness are out of sync, book a Signal Session. We’ll pinpoint what foundation work will unlock the next phase, without dragging execution or burning out your team.

If there is an entrepreneur in your circle that would benefit from the Signal Report, feel free to forward.

If you want to catch up on tools to translate vision into velocity, check out all the issues here.

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