Execution at Scale for SMBs - Pipe Dream, or AI-Enabled Reality?
⁉️What happens after you "cross the chasm" - your business idea is a hit, and customers are buying? You've invested SO MUCH time, energy, money in the front end of your growth - sales, marketing, pipeline, deal creation.
Now you are delivering - and demand is outpacing performance. It feels clunky to allocate resources, does not feel seamless to delivery your product and/or services, and people are confused.
💡It's time to invest in the back-end of your growth - to run an operationally excellent business that can scale.
Ask any operator: Once a company hits $5M–$50M, growth isn’t limited by demand. It’s limited by execution.
Too many companies stall in this phase - not because they lack opportunity, but because they can’t sustainably scale how people prioritize, coordinate, and follow through.
In fact, when showing the chart in this article to CEO roundtables for the past 18 months, I have yet to find ONE LEADER who thinks that executing the Growth Plan is easy.
Credit: Andrea Jones - Why Mid-Lifecycle Companies Need Executagility®
It's a grim reality that when you no longer have a small owner/founder team of "all-hands-on-deck" pulling you up from your bootstraps - AND you don't have the luxury of excess profits to afford full-time people to only work on growth projects - you're asking your DAY TO DAY TEAM to do EVERYTHING.
And that's HARD.
Enter the Executagility Model®—a systematized approach to execution built on 20+ years of real-world ops experience, including Intel process engineering, MIT systems thinking, and implementation work with dozens of mid-market teams.
The Executagility Model® is not another playbook. It’s an executable layer:
✅ Prioritization logic that cuts through ambiguity
✅ A part-time project coordination model for overloaded teams
✅ Clear definitions of success and feedback loops
✅ Daily micro-habits that build team-wide momentum
✅Objective Metrics that teams can see and improve
Amazingly, this model is backed by psychology at every turn!
💡Reduce "Cognitive Load" on your team and establish clarity by prioritizing a subset of project work each quarter with a specific "Definition of Done."
💡Avois Role Conflict and Ambiguity by designating specific roles of "Sponsor," "Project Manager," and "Core Team Members" with clear expectations for what each role does, and share that with all so team members are empowered to act during project execution
💡Allow for Self-Determination Theory and Progress Principle with Social Status Identiy Theory by giving teams the ability to articulate and commit their own stated tasks towards the Definition of Done with measurements towards meeting those commitments and regular Reviews where the Sponsor and other Stakeholders attend so that they gain status in their group achievements
💡Recognize Choice Architecture / Nudging and Social Accountability with consistent, daily stand-ups to check in and track progress, never allowing the excuse of "so sorry, I forgot" to get in the way of measurable progress
💡Use Game Theory to motivate teams to assess themselves using numbers, and work to beat the numbers each Sprint, Month, and Quarter
The Executagility Model® frees leaders to worry about steering the ship, while the team keeps the deck ship-shape at all times.
But we're not stopping here.
We know that people don't spontaneously catalyze themselves. That is probably the #1 instinct of a GREAT Project Manager. Everyone needs a little motivation.
When I share the Executagility Model solution with leaders of mid-lifecycle companies, they unequivocally agree that the model will turn the pain, frustration, and ambiguity of "DIY Execution" into a Confident, Accountable, and Inspired Team of Winners achieving the Growth Plans of the company every quarter, like clockwork.
Yet these same leaders still don't ACT. And Why Not?
Because it's hard to get started. They feel that going from their current state of a chaotic gray cloud of high Execution Risk to a clear and structured model will take too much effort on their part, and quite frankly - they just don't want to do it.
It's our job to make the TRANSITION as easy as the model itself. That is another component of the psychology - People are more likely to follow through when the environments make the "right" choices easy.
So what's next?
We are experimenting now. What will help leaders say YES? How can we convince them that adopting the Executagility Model is something their teams not only can do, but WILL do - because the environment will be so accommodating.
This is the same principle that Chip and Dan Heath write about in their classic book on Change Management, Switch: Shape the Path.
What are we doing now?
Let's make Awareness easy - Books, Web-Based-Training, Blitzes on Explanation - all backed up by our new AI-Trainer using my voice and "Mind" thanks to Delphi.ai:
Speaking Engagements and Videos - to provide the "What's In It For Me" nuanced explanations -to get people to the "Desire" state.
A Human Coach - to provide first-level Instructor-Led Training and walk teams through establishing their Executagility Capability internally - avoiding the "flavor of the month" fatigue.
Outsourced Project Management with PMs who already know the model well, to play the game with your team and train them slowly over time - so they will sustain strong execution indefinitely.
This is a horizontal play. Applicable across industries. Flexible for founder-led teams or maturing enterprises.
Execution is not a role—it’s a capability. And we’ve found a way to scale it.
People ask me: “Why hasn’t someone done this already?” Because until now, no one has built the Model with the operator in mind—or with the constraints growing companies actually face.
If you’re watching the rise of AI-native companies, keep an eye on who’s solving for human-execution systems too. That’s where real leverage lives.
SO EXCITED.
Andrea