Give Them B: The Thinking Between Vision and Execution
In my last newsletter, I wrote about why problems that show up in marketing, sales, innovation, or team alignment are often symptoms of the same thing:
The founder knows exactly what makes the business work. The problem is that knowing it is not the same as making it clear enough for the whole team to act on.
For many founders, that idea is frustrating because they feel like they've already done this work.
But we have a brand strategy.
And they do. Target consumer. Positioning. Brand pillars. Values. Messaging.
The problem isn't necessarily the work. It's the job we're asking it to do.
A brand guide helps marketers consistently build and communicate the brand.
But as a company grows, sales, product, operations, finance, and leadership make decisions that determine where the business goes.
They need to understand not only what the company stands for, but the thinking that connects that vision to the choices they make.
That reminds me of a conversation I had years ago.
I was sitting in a conference room with a brilliant founder who was absolutely livid.
He could not understand why his team wasn't getting it.
He had hired smart people. He was paying them a lot of money. He knew exactly what he wanted. And yet they kept going around and around, coming back with work that wasn't right.
I'd heard versions of this frustration many times. And finally, probably with as much pent-up frustration as he had, I fired back: It's not them. It's you.
He looked at me. I told him: You see the vision incredibly clearly. And you can almost instantly see what the execution should look like.
You have A. And because you're so close to the business, you can jump straight to C.
Your team can't. Not because they're not smart. Because they're not you.
You have to give them B. The rationale. The tradeoffs. Why one choice is right and another isn't. What matters most when two good things are in conflict.
You can't give people A, wait for C, and then tell them when they've gotten it wrong.
They have to understand B.
I'd love to say he immediately saw the light and everything changed. It did not. But it started a different conversation.
Over time, instead of simply saying something wasn't right, he got better at explaining why. Instead of assuming everyone could make the connection he saw, he helped them understand the thinking behind it.
And his team got better at making those connections themselves.
That business went on to become incredibly successful, with a large organization executing far beyond what the founder could ever personally oversee.
I think about that conversation a lot because B is often what's missing as a founder-led company grows.
Early on, the founder can provide it personally. They're in the meetings. They're reviewing the work. They're explaining why something feels right or doesn't.
Eventually, there are too many decisions happening in too many places.
Sales needs to evaluate an opportunity. Product needs to prioritize innovation. Operations needs to make a tradeoff. Finance needs to decide where to invest.
The founder can't make every decision. And the business can't keep waiting for them to. Because better decision-making isn't ultimately the goal.
Growth is.
The goal is for hundreds and eventually thousands of decisions across the company to keep moving toward the same vision.
To move faster without losing focus.
To pursue new opportunities without becoming a different company every time one appears.
To grow without slowly optimizing away the thing that made the business work in the first place.
That's what it means to scale a founder's vision.
Give smart people enough of B—the thinking behind the vision—that they can apply it to decisions you haven't made yet and carry that vision much farther than you ever could alone.
Which raises the next question: What actually belongs in B? That's where I'll go next.
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