Your Company Doesn’t Have a Productivity Problem. It Has an Execution One.
- Gilma Mills
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
Key Takeaways
Mid-market companies don’t fail on strategy, they fail on execution design
Execution must be intentionally built, not assumed, or priorities fragment and follow-through depends on heroics.
Most “productivity problems” are actually execution infrastructure gaps
Momentum is protected through clear ownership, standardized execution, and weekly review rhythms that turn decisions into progress.
Why This Matters
Mid-market companies are now operating at enterprise-level complexity with startup-level execution muscle. Strategy refreshes won’t unlock the next phase of growth—fixing how work actually moves through the organization will.
Mid-market companies don’t stall because of bad strategy. They stall because execution quietly breaks as the business grows.
I’ve seen this happen repeatedly in organizations with $10M to $1B in revenue.
✅ Leadership teams are smart.
✅ The strategy decks are solid.
✅ The ambition is real.
Yet productivity drops, priorities blur, and while teams stay busy, outcomes slip.
This isn’t a motivation issue.
It’s an execution infrastructure failure.
The Mid-Market Trap No One Warns You About
At a certain size, what used to work stops working:
Informal decision-making collapses under complexity
Execution depends on heroics instead of systems
Strategy assumes alignment that doesn’t exist
Teams move fast—but not in the same direction
The organization didn’t get lazy.
It outgrew its operating model.
Most mid-market companies are operating at enterprise-level complexity with startup-level execution muscle. That gap shows up as:
Missed follow-through
Rework and duplication
Vendor confusion
Bloated costs hiding in plain sight
Leadership exhaustion from constant escalation
The board sees it as a productivity issue.
The frontline feels it as chaos.
The truth is simpler and harder.
Strategy Doesn’t Cascade. Execution Has to Be Built.
There’s a dangerous assumption I see over and over:
“Once we align on strategy, execution will follow.”
It won’t.
Execution doesn’t cascade. It requires structure, cadence, and ownership.
When those aren’t explicitly designed, three things happen:
Priorities Compete Instead of Converge
Teams interpret strategy differently. Everyone is “aligned” in theory—and misaligned in practice.
Productivity Gets Measured, Not Enabled
Leaders add KPIs rather than remove friction. Activity goes up. Output doesn’t.
Follow-Through Depends on People, Not Systems
The same names show up in every escalation. When they burn out, execution collapses.
This is where mid-market companies leak time, money, and momentum.
Quietly. Consistently. Expensively.
What Productivity Problems Actually Look Like on the Ground
Productivity breakdown rarely announces itself. It hides inside normal operations:
Teams rebuilding the same materials over and over
Inventory being ordered “just in case”
Vendors executing against unclear expectations
Legal, marketing, operations, and finance working in parallel—not together
Leaders approving work they don’t fully trust because stopping it feels riskier
Everyone is busy.
Very little is truly moving the business forward.
That’s not a people problem.
That’s an execution design problem.
The Real Question Leaders Should Be Asking
Instead of asking:
“Why isn’t my team more productive?”
Mid-market leaders should ask:
“Where does execution break down after decisions are made?”
Because that’s where strategy quietly dies.
Not in planning sessions.
Not in vision statements.
But in the handoffs, the assumptions, and the lack of operational clarity.
Execution Is the Strategy (Whether You Admit It or Not)
In every large-scale transformation I’ve led—across thousands of locations, dozens of vendors, and tens of millions in budget—the pattern is the same:
Waste hides where ownership is unclear
Cost overruns signal decision ambiguity
Productivity drops when execution isn’t standardized
Follow-through fails without an operating cadence
The companies that scale don’t have better ideas.
They have better execution infrastructure.
They decide:
What gets standardized
What gets simplified
Who owns what end-to-end
How progress is reviewed weekly, not quarterly
That’s not bureaucracy.
That’s how momentum is protected.
Why This Matters Now
Mid-market companies are under pressure from every direction:
Tighter margins
Faster growth expectations
Fewer resources than enterprise peers
Less tolerance for execution mistakes
You don’t get to “figure it out as you go” anymore.
The next phase of growth won’t be unlocked by another strategy refresh.
It will be unlocked by fixing how work actually moves through your organization.
If this resonates, you’re not behind.
You’re at the exact moment where execution needs to catch up to ambition and that’s a fixable problem.
Want Help Applying This?
If this article reflects challenges you’re facing, I work with leaders to translate strategy into clear priorities, ownership, and consistent execution.
We can start with a focused 1:1 session to understand your goals, assess where execution is breaking down, and determine whether working together makes sense.
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