The Execution Triangle: Three Words That Fix Most Team Slowdowns
There’s a moment in every fast-growing company where things stop moving the way they used to. The energy’s still there. The people are still smart. The work is getting done.
But the weight of the day starts to shift. People aren’t sure which priority is the priority. Decisions stretch out longer than they should. Everyone’s calendars are full, but no one’s quite sure what moved forward.
There are a lot of ways to describe what’s going wrong: misalignment, inefficiency, growing pains.
But when I’m inside a company, sitting in on exec meetings, watching how decisions move, how people update each other, I’m looking for just three things.
Not five values. Not seventeen KPIs. Three.
Clarity. Structure. Momentum.
And usually, one of them is missing.
Clarity
This is the most common gap.
Ask ten people in the company what matters most this quarter. You’ll get ten answers. All reasonable. All different.
Clarity isn’t a mission statement. It’s being able to say:
Here’s what we’re focused on.
Here’s how we’ll know it’s working.
Here’s what’s not a priority right now.
When this breaks, teams do what they think is best — in ten different directions. Leaders end up reviewing work that’s perfectly done and completely off-track. And nobody sees it coming until they’re halfway through the quarter.
Structure
Every team says they value autonomy. Few have the systems to support it.
Structure doesn’t mean more process. It means having enough rhythm, visibility, and shared norms that people don’t have to invent the wheel every Monday.
Without it:
Prioritization happens in DMs.
Updates come too late.
Ownership is vague enough that no one wants to take the risk of making the wrong call.
This is when you hear things like “Wait, who’s driving this?” or “Wasn’t that decided already?”
And suddenly every decision needs a meeting.
Momentum
If clarity is the compass and structure is the map, momentum is the pace. You don’t need a dashboard to feel when it’s gone. It shows up in silence. Delay.
That awkward space where everyone is “still waiting on X” and no one’s quite sure who’s supposed to move first.
Momentum is what happens when the path is clear, and the system isn’t in the way. It’s also fragile. It doesn’t fix itself. It’s either designed for or it disappears.
What this looked like inside a real team
A few months ago, I worked with a startup — 40 people, just past Series A.
Sharp founders. Fast early growth. But somewhere between doubling the team and launching a new product, things got quiet.
Not in the good, focused way. In the “are we all still aligned?” way. They didn’t need new hires. They needed to see what had quietly broken.
So we sat down and mapped what was actually happening week to week. Not the strategy decks — the real rhythms, tools, decisions.
Here’s what surfaced:
No shared priorities beyond “ASAP”
Two different teams building toward slightly different goals
Meetings that filled the calendar but didn’t move decisions forward
We didn’t launch a big initiative. We fixed one layer at a time:
Named what mattered
Built a simple weekly review system
Clarified who decides what, and how
It took three weeks to feel the shift. Not in slides, in how people talked to each other. What they stopped apologizing for. What they stopped waiting for.
That’s how momentum returns.
A final note…
When things slow down, most leaders look at their people. I look at their system.
Clarity, structure, momentum. That’s the triangle. You don’t need to fix all three at once. Just notice which one’s wobbling.
And start there.
