Why Your Strategic Ambition is Leading to Organizational Gridlock

You have elite vision, but your “pipes” are clogged. If your list of goals is long but your completion rate is zero, you’re in Gridlock.

The Misconception

I can’t count how many times I have seen CEOs or senior leaders commit to a long list of items in their strategic plans, believing that more equals better. This approach is misguided. When you commit to more than your processes can handle, you create gridlock within your organization.

Why do growth-minded CEOs face missed deadlines? They often think the reason is not enough people, and that adding more talent will solve the delays. Or that they haven’t committed to enough things to move the needle on missing completion dates. The reality is that your processes might not be able to manage the volume of your ambitions. Until you address this issue, you won’t be able to correct the delays. Adding more people or more projects to the organization can lead to more problems than it solves. Instead of increasing your workforce or your workload, focus on improving your workflows. By adopting process de-layering and simplifying workflows, you can eliminate strategy drift and increase your chances of meeting your goals.

It’s Not the Portfolio, It’s Your Process

You can’t drive a Ferrari through a swamp; the issue isn’t the car, it’s the terrain. When planning your portfolio, consider one key factor: process throughput. By committing to what your processes can currently handle, you will accomplish more in less time than trying to force double the workload through a limited capacity. Attempting to do so only leads to backups and wait times at bottlenecks.

Not all bottlenecks are detrimental; they can serve a purpose, much like the metered on-ramps on interstate highways. Without these, traffic would come to a standstill, even more than during rush hour. So if you want to increase throughput, you first need to understand the conditions that surround the constraint and make improvements around those conditions, then increase the capacity of the constraint, and finally start adding more people or projects.

Instead of launching new initiatives, try this: audit your current workflow capacity and only “greenlight” initiatives that your current system can truly manage. This approach ensures your strategy results in completed projects rather than merely “works in progress.”