Business Blog: 90% of the problems we see come from skipping one step

Inside our MGMT Accelerator, we spend a lot of time diagnosing real challenges.

Not hypotheticals. Not theories.

Actual work pulled straight from a leader's week.

And the same story shows up over and over:

Your team works hard to set SMART goals.
You debate them. Rewrite them. Pass them around.
Suddenly, you're staring at "Q1 Goals – Version 6."

Three weeks fly by.

The banner finally goes up in the kitchen.

And then—everyone sprints straight into execution.

Here's the trap:

In the rush to start, most managers skip the step that makes or breaks the quarter:

The How.

The quiet, overlooked character with outsized influence.

So your team charges toward the big goal… but without the context only you can provide:

✅ Are we optimizing for speed or quality?

✅ Is this something to solve independently, or do you expect collaboration?

✅ What tradeoffs are acceptable?

✅ What's "good enough"?

✅ What's absolutely not?

This is how Secret Expectations creep in.

And once they show up, they sabotage everything.

In class, about 75% of the challenges we diagnose stem from unclear or unspoken expectations.

Even the "wins" can hide landmines.

✅ A recruiter hits their placement target. Great.

❌ But what if 5 people quit after onboarding?

❌ Or the budget got blown by 120%?

The goal was met.

The method was costly.

That's why the How matters just as much as the What.

If you want a team that moves fast and in the right direction, expectations can't stay in your head.

They need to be co-authored, visible, and simple enough to guide daily decisions.

We teach leaders exactly how to do this in our programs — in a way that removes friction, reduces rework, and earns back hours of your week.

More on that soon.

👉 For now: Look at one of your team's current goals. Ask yourself, "Have I made the How clear enough that they could execute it without me?"

If the answer isn't a confident yes, that's your next high-impact move.

Talk soon, Mar + Dave

PS. If you want to master this skill (and a dozen others that make managing more effective), join our Fundamentals (0-3 years of manager experience) or Accelerator (3+ years of manager experience) cohorts while they're 25% off (ends tomorrow and seats are limited).