Why smart leaders still struggle to deliver

More than 15 years ago, I joined an ambitious organisation that was not yet built to deliver its ambition.

That gap taught me more about execution than any strategy book ever has.

I had moved from a large, highly commercial organisation into a much smaller business. To put the difference in perspective, the organisation I left generated roughly twice as much net profit as the new organisation produced in total turnover.

I joined because I could see the opportunity. It had expertise, a credible product and ambitions to grow. I knew I had the commercial experience to help (I was also starting up a new business so the change in my work dynamics helped).

But their ambition was moving faster than the infrastructure beneath it.

The ambition was credible. The operating system was not.

The organisation had previously been a government entity. Historically, it had not needed to create demand. The work was already there.

Now it was operating commercially. It had competitors. Its executives had to find opportunities, communicate value and win business in a marketplace that would not reward them simply for being knowledgeable.

The structure and support were limited. People often had to do everything themselves. More importantly, the collective self-belief had not caught up with the new commercial reality…. ‘we don’t/can’t do that’ was heard too often.

That was where I first began doing significant internal coaching. The executives did not only need targets or a sales process. They needed to believe in themselves, believe in the product and develop the confidence to compete.

It taught me an early lesson:

Personal drive can support an organisation’s ambition, but it cannot become the organisation’s operating system.

Ambition is not the same as readiness

Last week, in The Second Half of Ambition, I wrote about turning 50 and questioning whether the ambition that brought you this far is still taking you where you want to go.

This is the next part of that conversation.

Ambition creates direction. But it does not automatically create the focus, systems, capacity, ownership or emotional energy required to deliver.

McKinsey’s research into more than 400 companies found that the biggest distinction between stronger and weaker strategy performers was not simply vision. It was mobilisation: translating strategic choices into organisational readiness, assigning ownership, reallocating resources and stopping work that no longer supported the strategy.

Smart leaders often assume a sound idea and enough determination will force progress. Sometimes it will. But when ambition keeps expanding while resources remain fixed, the result is not acceleration.

It is fragmentation.

When activity masquerades as execution

I have seen this from both sides.

Earlier in my career, when I was closer to the day-to-day work, I could become absorbed in the activity. We needed another meeting, another conversation, another update and another push. Everybody was busy. From inside the trenches, it felt like progress.

Later, as a Sales Director, General Manager and Managing Director, I could see the pattern more clearly. A good leader cannot remain in the trenches all the time. You have to step back and take the helicopter view.

From there, you notice meetings that exist because they have always existed. You see people working hard without clear ownership and five priorities competing for the same time and attention.

In the nicest possible sense, capable people become busy fools.

Sophie Leroy’s experiments on “attention residue” found that people can struggle to disengage mentally from unfinished work, reducing performance when they switch tasks. A day filled with projects, messages, meetings and interruptions may feel productive while steadily weakening the attention each priority receives.

Harvard Business Review has also warned about initiative overload: organisations add new projects without stopping existing ones, pushing severe overload down into the business.

A full diary proves activity. It does not prove delivery.

Why intelligent leaders are especially vulnerable

High achievers can hold a great deal in their heads. They see patterns quickly, understand complexity and move naturally between strategic and operational questions.

That strength can become a blind spot.

Because they can understand ten priorities, they assume ten priorities can be executed.

Because they can personally work at an exceptional pace, they assume their team can absorb the same demands.

Because an idea is clear in their own mind, they underestimate how much sequencing, communication and repetition others need.

This is closely connected to The Decision Fatigue Nobody Talks About at Senior Level. When too many decisions, escalations and unfinished priorities climb upwards, leaders lose the cognitive space required for judgement. Their ambition remains, but their ability to direct it becomes noisier.

Research on job demands and resources reaches a similar conclusion. High demands are not automatically damaging, but when workload, cognitive pressure and emotional demands are not matched by autonomy, support, feedback and recovery, exhaustion becomes more likely.

Among physicians, a BMJ Open study found that higher workload and insufficient resources were associated with greater burnout.

That principle extends beyond medicine.

Capacity is not simply the number of hours available. It includes attention, decision-making bandwidth, team capability and the ability to recover.

Execution creates trust

Ambition may energise people initially.

Execution determines whether they continue to believe you.

When a CEO announces another transformation, a founder changes direction again, a senior partner introduces a fresh priority or a clinical leader launches an improvement programme, people watch what happens next.

• Are responsibilities clear?

• Has something else been stopped?

• Are resources moving?

• Will difficult decisions be made?

• Will the leader remain interested after the launch meeting?

If the answer is repeatedly no, teams learn to wait. They nod, attend and produce the slides, but hold back their full commitment because experience tells them this priority may soon be replaced.

Harvard Business Review research found that execution depends less on rigidly following a top-down plan and more on coordination across functions, clear commitments and adapting when reality changes.

Execution creates trust because it proves that priorities mean something.

Capacity always has a cost

In my 20s, I was relentless. That continued through much of my 30s.

I worked the normal career and then added early mornings, evenings, weekends and time away from home because I wanted particular outcomes.

I had ambition, and I was prepared to pay for it.

By my 40s, the question changed.

It was no longer simply:

“Can I continue doing this?”

It became:

“Why am I doing it, and what is it costing me?”

Health and family have both paid part of that price. In my mid-20s, I received a Dear John letter. Fortunately, life ultimately unfolded in a way I am grateful for, but the lesson remained. On other occasions, self-awareness helped me recognise the strain and correct course.

I would not tell the younger Laurence to abandon his ambition. Much of what I have built came from that energy.

I would tell him to check the cost more often.

As I explored in Why High Achievers Feel Stuck: Even When Everything Looks Successful, visible success can coexist with an internal sense that something is no longer aligned.

The answer is not always another target.

Sometimes the next stage requires a more honest definition of progress.

Give ambition a structure strong enough to carry it

The solution is not smaller ambition.

It is better containment.

That means deciding what matters now, what must wait and what needs to stop. It means turning broad intent into owned actions, allocating genuine capacity and reviewing progress without adding bureaucracy.

It also means being close enough to execution to understand where delivery is failing without becoming the person who carries everything.

A recent Financial Times analysis made a similar distinction: strong leaders retain the wider vision while using selective “deep dives” to understand operational reality and support accountable managers.

This is where The Elevation Model™ becomes practical.

Vision creates direction, but Alignment tests whether the ambition fits the leader, the organisation and the life around it.

Awareness exposes the habits creating fragmentation.

Pathways turn possibility into sequence.

Commitment creates ownership.

Embodiment makes delivery repeatable rather than dependent on a burst of energy.

Before adding another ambition, leaders should ask:

1. What genuinely matters now?

2. What will we stop to create capacity for it?

3. Who owns the outcome rather than merely attending the meetings?

4. What systems and support are missing?

5. What will this demand from the team, from me and from the people outside work?

6. How will we know that progress is real rather than simply visible?

Ambition creates direction.

Execution creates trust.

But without clarity, even strong ambition becomes noise.

The best leaders do not reduce their ambition to make it comfortable. They give it enough structure, focus and honesty to make it deliverable.

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I’m Laurence Loxam and I’ve pushed limits in business, on mountains, and at the finish line.

Now I help elite professionals do the same, pushing past the point most people stop.

I coach CEOs, doctors, lawyers and founders who have achieved success but still feel there is more.

Together, we unlock clarity, sharpen confidence, and lead with conviction.

Ready for your next leadership breakthrough? Let’s connect.

References

Bakker, A.B., Demerouti, E. and Sanz-Vergel, A.I. (2023) ‘Job Demands–Resources Theory: Ten Years Later’, Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 10, pp. 25–53.

Debets, M.P.M., Scheepers, R., Silkens, M. and Lombarts, K.M.J.M.H. (2022) ‘Structural equation modelling analysis on relationships of job demands and resources with work engagement, burnout and work ability’, BMJ Open, 12(12), e062603.

Hollister, R. and Watkins, M.D. (2018) ‘Too Many Projects’, Harvard Business Review, September–October.

Krell, A., D’Amico, A., West, A., Diedrich, D. and Birshan, M. (2025) ‘How Strategy Champions Win’, McKinsey Quarterly, 14 July.

Leroy, S. (2009) ‘Why Is It So Hard to Do My Work? The Challenge of Attention Residue When Switching Between Work Tasks’, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 109(2), pp. 168–181.

Skapinker, M. (2026) ‘Bosses Must Master the Detail Without Losing the Vision’, Financial Times, 17 June.

Sull, D., Homkes, R. and Sull, C. (2015) ‘Why Strategy Execution Unravels—and What to Do About It’, Harvard Business Review, March.