Lack of Alignment (Vision to Execution)

After I exited a company that I had grown from $3.5M to $30M in 2 years, business owners everywhere would ask me…how the hell did you do that??

Today’s theme is the answer.

And the truth is…it’s more important today than it was 4 years ago.

Why This Matters Now

We’re talking about a concept that is not to be glossed over…missing it can kill your company. According to McKinsey (2023), while 82% of founders and business owners believe their organizations are “aligned”, only 23% actually are.

That gap costs U.S. businesses over (get this!)…$1 Trillion a year in lost productivity gains and missed revenue!

For founders, this means wasted resources, lost deals, and teams that move in circles.

A SaaS founder I spoke with recently shared how, despite a killer product and ambitious goals, their teams kept duplicating work and missing deadlines.

The culprit? No clear path from roadmap to execution.

And within 10 months, their growth flatlined and top talent started to leave.

The word I use to describe the clear path from roadmap to execution is Alignment.

Alignment IS NOT a “nice to have”…it’s the key difference makers between stalling and scaling.

The Death Spiral: How Misalignment Happens (and Compounds)

Let’s break it down, plain and simple:

🔹 Siloed teams The founder has no vision (or keeps it to themselves). Staff & Teams set their own priorities…leading to duplicated work and wasted resources.

🔹 Conflicting priorities Without a shared roadmap, staff react to the loudest voice or latest fire drill.

🔹 No feedback loop Execution happens in a vacuum. Lessons aren’t shared, so mistakes repeat.

🔹 Reactive decisions Instead of strategic moves, leaders make the same slow decisions and bottle up potential.

🔹 Dysfunctional staff staff become more ineffective (and checked out) with no progress. Top talent leaves

Mis-Alignment (lack of vision to execution) is like growing debt for your entire business. Ignore it, and the interest compounds…until your business grinds to a halt.

Why Alignment (Vision to Execution) Is Critical

This is key to understand…

Alignment doesn’t come from pep talks or a big whiteboard session once a year. It comes from structure built into a repeatable system.

Think of your company like a sports team. The coach doesn’t just say, “Let’s win!” and hope the players figure it out.

Instead, they create a game plan, assign positions, track the score in real time, and adjust plays as the game unfolds.

When the right foundation is in place, you get a team that moves faster, makes fewer mistakes, and actually has fun in the game.

The problem…

Most founders try to hold all of this in their head.

That works up to about $3M–$5M.

Beyond that, the weight crushes them.

If you want to scale, you need an operating system that takes what’s in your head and installs it in your company.

Your Next Step: The Company OS

What I just walked you through…building clarity, creating annual and quarterly targets, establishing rhythm, developing feedback loops, roles & ownership, managing information flow, the living playbooks, the automations…none of it happened by accident.

It happened because we had a system.

That system is what we now call the Modern Operators Company OS. It’s built inside Notion (so it’s simple, flexible, and visual), but more importantly…it’s built around the proven frameworks we’ve used to scale dozens of companies.

Here’s what it actually gives you:

• A single source of truth: no more scattered docs, rogue spreadsheets, or “where is that file?” Slack messages.

• Clear ownership & accountability: everyone knows the goal, their role, and how their work creates results.

• More Freedom: Handoff to staff who can perform at your level frees you to be the leader and not the bottleneck

• Grow Rapidly with Automations: automation needs a strong foundation to work properly…without it, it will produce more chaos and bottlenecks to deal with

• Real-time dashboards: see, at a glance, what’s working, what’s stalling, and what to fix next.

• Faster Execution: when your data and processes are structured, AI can work REALLY well for you…revealing insights, automating workflows, and accelerating execution.

Here’s what happens after you put it to work:

A company that feels lighter, faster, and much more predictable

Plus as a founder, you can finally stop being the system and start scaling the system.

If you’ve been reading this and thinking, “That’s exactly what we need, but I don’t even know where to start,” then this is your start.

👉 [Explore the Company OS here] (insert link)

Because alignment isn’t just a strategy session…it’s an operating system for your business.

And the sooner you install it, the sooner your business starts compounding forward instead of sideways.

From Chaos to Clarity

A company I once took over was a textbook case of misalignment: no clear vision, group decision-making, no metrics, and everyone chasing what felt good in the moment.

We started by stabilizing and building the foundation…built a vision to sell the company within 5 years, identified where we wanted to be at the end of the year, setup quarterly goals, weekly meetings to stay on track, built a rhythm of gathering feedback on what worked and what didn’t…then tightened, established job roles with performance and ownership, built a living knowledgebase of repeatable processes…

Then we optimized…stood up a dashboard of top KPS’s, narrowed to what was important for us, threw out low performing products and offers, doubled down on high performers, dialed the company metrics within “best practices” range for all teams, stood up automations for well understood processes.

Only then, did we focus on scale.

The result?

From start to finish, we grew 997% in two years….think about that…2 years. Not only was the company ready to sell 3 years early, but it was so well dialed in we got a premier multiple.

And, the best part?

No more fires…we had way more fun…much less stress and honestly…the company became boring to run (which is how a well-functioning business should feel).

If you’re struggling, I know this might sound unattainable.. It is not only possible, but can be practically guaranteed…IF you know how to install a solid foundation

Final Thoughts

Alignment isn’t a one-and-done event. It’s an ongoing ritual and habit.

Alignment means building (and sustaining) clarity…tightening focus…building rhythm…all staff rowing in the same direction…feedback loops that deliver better signal.

And with automation and the rise of AI agents…alignment means that AI automation can deliver WAY better results for your business across all teams.

Your results will compound in ways you can’t imagine right now

• Better products and services for your customers

• Better brand messaging that gets more customers to buy

• Better conversion of prospects into customers

• Faster communication with prospects and customers

• Better wow experience for customers who then become repeat buyers and refer more business

• And on…and on…