Your Instincts Built This Business—But They Won't Scale It
Why strategic intuition becomes a liability at the next level of growth.
Early in my company's growth, I made a bet on a new service line. We'd been doing well in one market, and I had a strong feeling—based on a few conversations and some pattern-matching in my head—that an adjacent market was ready for what we offered.
I didn't do real research. I didn't validate the assumption with data. I just trusted my gut, the same gut that had been right enough times to get us to where we were.
We invested six months and a significant chunk of our marketing budget chasing that market. It didn't work. Not because the market wasn't real, but because we misread what they actually needed. By the time we figured that out, we'd burned resources, confused our team about our priorities, and lost momentum in the market where we were already winning.
The problem wasn't that my instincts were bad. They'd been right plenty of times before. The problem was that I was still making strategic decisions like a five-person startup when we were a fifty-person company. The stakes had changed, but my process hadn't.
I call this the Gut Instinct Gap—the pattern where founders keep relying on intuition for strategic decisions long after the company needs something more rigorous. It's one of the most dangerous traps I see when coaching founder-CEOs of $5M to $50M companies, because the very thing that made them successful early on becomes the thing that holds them back.
What the Gut Instinct Gap Looks Like
The pattern is easy to spot from the outside. The company's strategy seems to shift frequently. New priorities appear based on a conversation the founder had last week. The team starts working on something, then pivots before they can see results. There's always a new opportunity, a new angle, a new direction.
From the founder's perspective, this feels like agility. They're reading the market, responding to signals, staying ahead of the competition. But from the team's perspective, it feels like chaos. They can't invest deeply in anything because the target keeps moving. They've learned to wait before fully committing to a new initiative, because it might change next month.
The strategy exists mostly in the founder's head. When pressed, they can articulate it—but it comes out differently each time. The core idea might be consistent, but the framing, the priorities, the specifics shift based on context. What feels like clarity to the founder feels like ambiguity to everyone else.
Why Founders Fall Into This Trap
Intuition is what got most founders here. In the early days, there was no data. There were no established processes. You made decisions fast, based on pattern recognition and gut feel, and you were right often enough to build something real.
That success creates a feedback loop. The founder learns to trust their instincts because their instincts have been validated repeatedly. Why would you slow down and analyze when your gut has a better track record than most people's spreadsheets?
The problem is that the environment changes as the company grows. Early on, the founder is close to everything—customers, product, operations. Their intuition is grounded in direct experience. But as the company scales, the founder gets further from the front lines. The pattern recognition that worked at ten people doesn't work at fifty, because the founder isn't seeing the same patterns anymore.
There's also an identity piece. Many founders see strategic intuition as their superpower. It's what makes them a founder rather than a manager. Admitting that they need a more structured approach to strategy can feel like admitting they've lost their edge.
What This Pattern Costs Your Business
The first cost is clarity. When strategy lives in the founder's head and shifts based on intuition, no one else can fully internalize it. The leadership team has their interpretation. Middle managers have a different one. The people doing the work are just trying to figure out what matters this week.
This lack of clarity makes it impossible to invest deeply in a differentiated position. Marketing can't build consistent messaging because the story keeps changing. Sales isn't sure which customers to prioritize. Product is building features for a strategy that might be different by the time they ship.
The second cost is churn. Gut-driven strategy tends to produce frequent pivots. The founder senses something isn't working, makes a change, senses something else, changes again. Each pivot feels small, but the cumulative effect is exhausting. The team never gets to see what happens when they commit to something long enough to learn from it.
The third cost is trust. When the team watches strategies come and go, they stop believing in them. They become cynical about new initiatives. "Let's see if this one sticks" becomes the unspoken response to every announcement. That cynicism is corrosive, and it's hard to reverse.
What a Real Strategy System Looks Like
Good strategy isn't about eliminating intuition. It's about combining intuition with rigor—testing assumptions, creating clarity, and building commitment.
A clear strategic position defines where you play and how you win. Not vague aspirations like "be the best" or "deliver quality"—specific choices about which customers you serve, what value you deliver, and why you're different from alternatives. This should fit on one page and be understandable by anyone in the company.
A documented strategy gets shared widely. The leadership team should be able to articulate it consistently. So should managers. So should individual contributors. If you ask five people and get five different answers, you don't have a strategy—you have a founder with opinions.
A planning rhythm connects strategy to execution. Annual planning sets direction. Quarterly planning translates that into priorities. Monthly and weekly check-ins measure progress. The strategy becomes a living document that guides decisions rather than a slide deck that gets reviewed once a year.
Hypotheses get tested before becoming commitments. Instead of betting big on intuition, smart founders run small experiments. They validate assumptions with data before scaling investment. They give new strategies enough time to produce results before deciding they're not working.
Strategic changes get communicated deliberately. When the strategy does need to evolve—and it will—the change is explained clearly. Why are we shifting? What did we learn? What's different now? This builds trust rather than eroding it.
How to Know If You Have This Problem
There's a simple test. Find five people in your company—not your leadership team, but people a level or two down. Ask them each, separately, to describe the company's strategy in two or three sentences.
Compare the answers. Are they accurate? Are they consistent with each other? Are they clear and specific, or vague and generic?
If you get five versions of "we deliver great service to our customers," you have a Gut Instinct Gap problem. The strategy in your head hasn't translated into shared understanding across the organization.
Where to Start
You don't need to abandon your intuition. But you do need to make your strategy explicit and testable.
Start by writing it down. One page. What's your target customer? What problem do you solve for them? Why are you different from alternatives? What are you betting on for the next three years? Force yourself to make choices and commit them to paper.
Then share it. Walk your leadership team through it. Get their reactions. Refine it based on their input. Then cascade it through the organization. The goal is for everyone to be able to articulate the strategy in their own words—not recite it from memory, but genuinely understand it.
Finally, create a rhythm for testing and updating. Strategy isn't static. But changes should be deliberate, communicated, and based on evidence—not just the founder's latest hunch.
Questions for You and Your Team
Before moving on, take a few minutes to reflect on these questions. The goal isn't to have perfect answers—it's to surface the gaps between what you believe about your strategy and what's actually understood across the company.
If you asked five random employees to describe your strategy, how consistent would their answers be? Consistency reveals whether your strategy has actually landed or just exists in your head.
How many times has your strategic focus shifted in the last twelve months—and were those shifts based on data or intuition? Frequent pivots often signal gut-driven decision-making rather than disciplined strategy.
Can your team articulate why you win—specifically—without using words like "quality," "service," or "best"? Vague differentiation usually means the strategy isn't clear enough to guide real decisions.
What to Do Next
If this pattern sounds familiar, you're not alone. Most founders I work with have been running on instinct longer than they should, and their teams are feeling the effects.
If you want to see where your Strategy systems stand relative to other growth companies, take the Growth Readiness Assessment. It's a free 15-minute diagnostic that scores your business across six dimensions, including Strategy.
Take the Growth Readiness Assessment
If you'd like help clarifying your strategic position or building a planning system that connects strategy to execution, I offer a free 60-minute consultation.
Related Content
[Placeholder: Quarterly Planning Playbook]
[Placeholder: Meeting Rhythms Playbook]
[Placeholder: Blog post - The Loyalty Trap]
Related Inc.com Articles
Having a Goal Is Not the Same as Having a Strategy. Here’s Why
Strategy Is More Than a Pretty Plan: Here Are 8 Ways to Connect It to Your Business Operations
If Your Business Strategy Looks Too Complicated, It Probably Is. Here’s Why
About the Author
Bruce Eckfeldt is a strategic business coach and exit planning advisor who helps founder-CEOs of growth-stage companies scale systematically and exit successfully. A former Inc. 500 CEO who built and sold his own company, he brings real-world operational experience to strategic planning and leadership development. He's a certified ScalingUp and 3HAG/Metronomics coach, Certified Exit Planning Advisor (CEPA), an Inc. Magazine contributor, and host of the "From Angel to Exit" podcast. Bruce works with growth companies in complex industries, guiding leadership teams through growth challenges and exit preparation. Reach him at bruce@eckfeldt.com with any questions or if you want more information or to book a call with him.
