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Operational chaos because of the gap between founder and front line that leads to strategy Tacit knowledge that needs to be explicit - most importantly the why we do these actions and not just a list of actions No feedback loop so operations drifts causing founder reengagement to sort the chaos that leads to founder burnout and they stop focusing on the working on the business strategy stuff.
Bootstrapping / Effectuation (lots of local, opportunistic choices)Shiny object / Siren behaviourAnd Drucker’s purposeful abandonment as the remedy
Each small choice looks harmless or even sensible in isolation.Taken together, they destroy or distort a valuable option (classic example: overuse of a public resource, or killing a rail service through lots of local travel decisions).
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Strategy, Execution & Alignment — Deep Research for SME Leaders v1
Peter Drucker coined the term ‘purposeful abandonment’ in which he proposed, “The first step in a growth policy is not to decide where and how to grow…it is to decide what to abandon. In order to grow, a business must have a systematic policy to get rid of the outgrown, the obsolete and the unproductive.”
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Where does my idea Wall to wallet sit in this research ? I feel it Is spot on for numerous issues
What stats do I quote in the book so far? Is it worth reflecting on these stats to se the scene the first topic of this chapter?
The survival and performance statistics are stark. Roughly 20% of small businesses fail in year one, around 30% by year two, and approximately 50% by year five. These numbers are consistent across markets and decades. What is less often acknowledged is that the majority of these failures are not primarily caused by bad products or bad markets — they are caused by strategic and operational confusion: not knowing which customers are worth serving, which activities create value, and which decisions to make when they conflict.
Maybe worth quoting this?
Research confirms a consistent, positive relationship between the extent of strategic planning activities and the performance of small businesses. A meta-analysis of 87 correlations across 31 empirical studies found that strategic planning has a positive, moderate, and significant impact on organisational performance, and that this holds across private and public sectors and across international settings. The implication is direct: SMEs that plan strategically — even informally — outperform those that do not.
I need more details on this:
Burnout is not a soft issue. Research on entrepreneurial burnout demonstrates measurable effects on organisational performance: low motivation, demoralization, poor quality of work, and the perception that the company is performing poorly. The consequence is that the founder — already the strategic brain of the business — becomes progressively less capable of strategic thinking precisely when the business most needs it. This is the vicious cycle your ICP is living in.
I need a clear link between Vision / Mission / Purpose with Strategy, Strategy execution and strategic alignment + can we tie in the 6W’s
Strategy is what and why for who, linked to vision/purpose and executed in the mission - the decisions / opportunity costs / the scenario - As an archetype it is the literal translation to the attractiveness principle - you cannot be all things to all people
Strategy execution is the how and when, with what and by who
Strategic alignment is the 6 W’s - the machine that spits out the strategy (Pragmatic Value chain)
Part 3: The Strategy Execution Gap — Evidence and Root Causes
Overall this section is better when we get to later in the book problem and impact. We need to design questions in the chapter to draw these out.
Root causes need to be mapped to UEM and link how the blocks work I think. Also look at Monsters
Dig in to this one: Strategy formulation and implementation treated as separate: Mintzberg argued decades ago that the separation of thinking from doing is itself an execution killer. In organisations of one (the founder), the implementor is the formulator, and strategy adapts quickly. As an organisation grows, the distance between the person who set the strategy and the people executing it creates drift. The solution is not more meetings — it is shorter, tighter feedback loops that bring what is being learned operationally back into strategic decision-making.
Find this article, as it links mental models, tacit knowledge, as organisations grow formulation to execution gap by structure / systems and people layers - does it show a how in Knowledge management.??? What are the likely root causes as SME grow. What blocks drift (drifting goals) or fail at tacit knowledge or feedback systems between blocks
PART 3. Here is the Wall to Wallet premise The Translation Gap: From Intent to Outcome
The fundamental execution problem is a translation problem — the failure to convert strategic intent into understood priorities, daily decisions, and measurable outcomes. This is the "Wall to Wallet" problem in operational terms: the strategy exists somewhere between the leader's head and the team's action, and the business pays the price in the gap.
New empirical research confirms that organisations with well-designed performance management systems — specifically those with goal cascading, real-time feedback, KPI alignment, and clear incentive mechanisms — demonstrate significantly better execution outcomes. The size of the organisation is a contextual factor, but the principle holds across SMEs and large firms: without these structural mechanisms, strategy drift is the default outcome.
This feels like it linked to the above Mintzberg
Part 4: Strategic Alignment — What It Actually Means for SMEs
Vertical and horizontal feels connected to my Pragmatic Value Chain (porters as well)
Generally this is a good focus for the book.
Part 5: The Financial Visibility Gap — An Underappreciated Alignment Failure
Focusses heavy on for-profit - we also need to consider NGO
Enterprise triangle and sustainable enterprise
Dig into this more after the NGO addition is updated: From a strategic alignment perspective, this is critical: you cannot align around a strategic position if you don't know which clients, products, or activities are actually profitable. Research on SME business model profitability confirms that the factors most associated with future viability are professionalisation of the financial area, innovation, and investment in commercial capability — not expansion of product range or customer base. This validates the "simplify before you scale" thesis empirically.
Part 6: What the Giants Offer SMEs — Translated and Filtered
I am not read The Rumelt Kernel: The Most Actionable SME Framework - So I need to understand this more, especially for formulation vs execution vs alignment and the UEM
PORTERS tradeoffs and value chain better agree we are not teaching 5 Forces and have dealt with this in the 4 stack quick look at the market - we are not teaching marketing but we are interested in the value chain pain points and understanding tradeoff maturity as it leans into simplicity and knowing what to stop.
VIRO versus my 4 stack - differences and what does an actual VRIO analysis entail.
What is Sarasvathy (Effectuation)?
Part 7: The Practical Best Practices — Evidence from High-Performing SMEs
This will really feed later chapters on what to do once we simplify - how to maintain entrpenural system as they grow to mediem 10 figures
Scale vs SME Agility vs alignment vs formulation strategy choices
Why because Scale is my new acronym and sort of leads on simplify so you can scale if you need to rather then growth at any costs
Maybe will look at look at how SCALE fits onto the Cynefin framework and what to do when VUCA occurs (Complexity). if you simplify you reduce complex to complicated and complicated to simple - so when more complex comes up you have capacity to realign
VUCA Components Defined:
(A): The lack of clarity and difficulty in understanding exactly what a situation means.
Usually we advise to the following when managing in a VUCA World
To counter a VUCA environment, organizations often adopt strategies focusing on agility, flexibility, and foresight. Some frameworks suggest countering these challenges with:
Vision to counter Volatility.
Understanding to counter Uncertainty.
Clarity to counter Complexity.
Agility to counter Ambiguity.
"On the last slide, we established that 2026 enterprise risk lives in the 'Complex' quadrant. So, what do you actually do when your organization gets pushed into that space?
Most executives yell, 'It's a VUCA environment!' and freeze. They use VUCA as an excuse for strategic paralysis. But VUCA is not a synonym for chaos. It is a precise diagnostic tool for resource allocation. When you are in the Complex domain, you look at this board to decide where to spend your money and time:
If the threat is Volatile (Unstable): You don't need a new strategy; you need Agility. You spend your budget stockpiling resources and building slack into the system so you can take a hit.
If the threat is Uncertain (Lack of Knowledge): You invest in Information. You use your boundary-spanning networks to gather new data from outside your echo chamber.
If the threat is Complex (Too many interconnected parts): You invest in Restructuring. You align your internal teams to mirror the complexity of the external environment.
If the threat is Ambiguous (No rules exist yet): This is where you invest in Intelligent Experimentation. You run safe-to-fail probes because fixed strategic plans are useless here.”
Strategy Execution: Beyond the Buzzwords — Deep Research Foundation V1 (based on the above deeper questions)
Part 1: Setting the Scene — Why These Statistics Belong at the Start
Noted stats at the start and pair it with part 2 to set the scene.
Part 2: The Execution Failure Rate — Wall to Wallet Is Exactly Right
Great framing for this chapter and what we will start with.
Need to investigate the idea of becoming my IP - maybe other people speak about the issue just that the Wall to wallet concept is visually easy to picture
Part 3: Purposeful Abandonment — Drucker as the Philosophical Entry Point
Love this section and will find a way to introduce it early or I am considering to introduce in “Simplifying and Optimising Business Models” as we start to consider what to abandon.
Part 4: The Vision–Mission–Purpose–Strategy Link — and the 6Ws
Is good and will use it to frame so we are all on the same page.
Part 5: Mintzberg, Tacit Knowledge, and the Formulation–Execution Gap as SMEs Grow
This needs to go into my enterprise triangle Iceberg model thinking, specifically how mintzberg talks about patterns where Structures + mental models = Patterns and events
The Core Mintzberg Argument
Mintzberg’s 1987 Harvard Business Review article “Crafting Strategy” argues that strategy is not a plan imposed from above but a pattern that emerges from the daily decisions of the people doing the work. His potter-at-the-wheel metaphor is central: the final product is a combination of intention and emergence — what she planned, what the clay allowed, and what she discovered along the way. This is both descriptively accurate for SMEs and normatively useful — it gives founders permission to treat strategy as adaptive rather than fixed. This feels like Hubbard Model (metal 2002)– Winning wheel framework - where he discusses Clear Fuzzy Strategy
Key elements that high performing organisations have in common
•effective execution (of processes and stated outcomes)
•perfect alignment (of systems and processes)
•ability to adapt rapidly (while maintaining control)
•clear and fuzzy strategy
•leadership teams, not leaders
•looking out (externally focused) as well as looking in (internally focused)
•right (not best) people
•manage the downside
balance everything.
Root Cause Mapped to UEM Blocks: The tacit knowledge failure maps directly onto the blocks between strategy (founder's intent) and operations (team's execution). The Mintzberg argument suggests the solution is not more documentation but shorter, tighter feedback loops that bring operational learning back into strategic decision-making — exactly the PDCA logic in your UEM model
Here I note that it's not about documenting everything and I agree but with the founder bottle neck in mind it has to be enough tacit to explicit knowledge transfer. Noting it the Why that is missing when the gap between founder grows - then we can clearly see where the 6W’s (who, what, when, where, why and how) importance comes in to strategically align formulation to execution (wall to wallet)
Good question
Diagnostic Question for the Chapter:
"When did you last learn something from the front line of your business that changed a strategic decision? If you're struggling to answer, the gap is already there."
Off on another tangent and not relevant for book I think, Yes I say we need to document tacit knowledge, but Mintzberg’s got me thinking when he used this example of his potter-at-the-wheel metaphor. This metaphor invokes that the experienced crafts person (artistic in nature), uses their deep sense of the craft to be adaptive, to listen to feedback from the clay on what is possible, to maybe discover something new and innovative or to just shape the final ideas using the clays natural limitations - yes a vase was the initial wish but maybe this time a deep bowl would be better.
Here is why this relates to the founder bottle neck - they had this deep idea maybe based on deep experience understanding of prior knowledge or the journey learnt so far -
But what really comes to mind is that the potter can document how they assess the clay, maybe even what guides their experience - but the limit will always be that the person reading it still needs to experince it themselves first through failing, or doing - so yes we can transfer tacit knowledge to explicit in the manner of documented thoughts or videos that visually explain but until you do its hard to know. You then have to coach, mentor, train, experiment, even fail to teach / transfer that newly document - documentation is sometimes the first step but maybe not enough.
Tacit knowledge from specialist and founder - explicit documented knowledge that is IP - teach to people who need it- then becomes someone else's new tacit knowledge - seems like a cycle - its why great football coaches can teach upcoming talent and make them stars. Technically if you had a great learning organisation you can skip tacit to explicit - but that is still a huge risk if a person leaves or the founder is not there - document and setup a great coaching, training and mentoring system.
That also said we need to recognise that actual skill and talent sometimes is natural and some people cannot be taught - here is where culture fit and finding teachable people are a cruical skill of SME - it means you can teach them and not have to pay for experience
Part 6: Performance Management Systems — Confirmed Evidence for Translation Mechanisms
This is the structural side that support the mental models of the iceberg that makes the UEM block interact and shape the pattern Mintzberg was referring to. when decisions are formulated and trades off are made it is the goals that shape the alignment, KPI that measure frequently and the feedback that is used to steer in the right direction often enough to avoid drift - here one of the papers suggested strategy focus 1 hr per day founder, 1 hr per week management, 1 hr per month teams.
Part 7: Entrepreneurial Burnout — Fully Verified, Deeper Evidence
Agreed the founder is the strategic brain of the business. Burnout progressively reduces their capacity for strategic thinking precisely when the business most needs it.
Linked to part 5. So here is the main reason for simplification - to reduce operational noise to allow the Founder strategic time while the business carries out the operations -
Comes from:
what else?
Part 8: The Giants Filtered for Your Reader
Yes use as guidance and references to lean on, to support my concepts.
I can definite see Rumelt's Kernel, works in with my SCALE Diagnose is SCALE, Policy is L and Actions seem like L&E - I can refence the ideas maybe but I am wary of discussing to openly against my overall SCALE approach - unless you can think of something I am missing. I plan to now read the book to better support my SCALE process.
VIRO - is an intersting one - yes it is an internal assessment but very misunderstood. You still have to look external with the VIRO as you compare yourself to competitors and measure your VRIO in particular against them. But here is the kicker you may have a great VRI but if O sucks then you have a missed opportunity - lots of people think you only need to be great at all but true competitive advantage really only comes when all 4 are strongly present. Furthermore most business do not even care about VRIO, look at supermarkets or bars that compete - there is no VRIO there so are more on more even playing field easy to copy and usually chase leading positions that people follow.
Sarasvathy's Effectuation — Why It Matters for Your ICP
I feel this leans on the bootleggers and people who are testing theoir models still - yes I can see how bootleggers withy a tested model then continue this habbit and maybe that is the risk. Here we need to link to the studies that show any form strategic planning will always be better then none…and the who do it more formally grow faster and adapt if done properly … a lesson in changing mental models.
also add in
Yes — “tyranny of small decisions” fits your world very cleanly, and it’s a nice bridge between:
Here’s how the concept works and how you can use it.
1. What “tyranny of small decisions” actually means
The phrase comes from economist Alfred Kahn (1966): a situation where many individually rational, small decisions add up to a big outcome that nobody would have chosen if they’d voted on it explicitly.
Examples in the literature:
In your terms:
No single “yes” kills the strategy. But 50 unfiltered yeses — to features, clients, exceptions, tech, partnerships — add up to a business model and operating system the founder would never design on purpose.
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