The Invisible Gap That Sinks Great Teams
We live in a business culture that celebrates vision. We’re told to dream big. Think bigger. To be the ones with the spark, the direction, the horizon line.
And when you’re a founder or CEO—or even just the loudest voice in the room—people expect that from you. You get used to carrying that mantle. You learn how to cast the future in a way that other people can rally behind. You make decisions that are meant to move the mountain.
But over time, something starts to shift.
Projects take longer. You’re repeating yourself more. What felt obvious now feels up for interpretation. The trust you once had with your right hand? It starts to wobble. And the person who used to anticipate your needs suddenly seems unsure.
You might find yourself thinking: Why is this taking so long? Why do I still feel like the bottleneck?
And maybe—quietly, in the back of your mind—you start wondering: Am I the only one who really gets what we’re trying to build?
But what if that’s the wrong question?
What if the issue isn’t the team? Or their commitment? Or even their capacity?
What if your vision has outgrown the infrastructure that’s meant to support it?
What if you’re asking people to run with something they were never fully equipped to carry?
There’s a term I use for this moment. This gap, if you will. I call it the vision vs. reality chasm.
To be clear, I’m certainly not the first person to observe this gap in the natural world. But much like a scientist studying black holes, once I saw it—I couldn’t look away. I’ve watched it play out again and again. Quietly. Systemically.
It’s the gap between the dream and the delivery. Between what lives in your head—and what your team has actually been equipped to carry.
And it doesn’t usually show up as a single dramatic failure. It creeps in slowly, like fog.
First, a team member asks for clarity on something you thought was obvious. Then a key initiative gets deprioritized—because no one knew who actually owned it. Then a decision gets made that feels completely out of sync with the direction you thought you’d communicated.
Eventually, that fog turns into friction. The trust starts to crack. And if you’re not careful, the people you relied on most start to either burn out… or check out.
That’s what this is really about. Not miscommunication. Not incompetence. Not even misalignment.
But a system that was never built to scale your leadership—and a team that’s been forced to build the plane while flying it.
There’s a quote from Peter Drucker I come back to often:
“So many brilliant people believe that ideas move mountains. But bulldozers move mountains; ideas show where the bulldozers should go to work.”
Vision is necessary. But without clarity, structure, and operational integrity—(aka the bulldozers)—it's just a really well-lit dream.
And someone has to move the mountain.
The question is: have you equipped your team to do it?
If you’re feeling tension with your COO, your right hand, or even your project leads—this might be the conversation you’ve been avoiding.
Or—if you are the COO, the right hand, the strategic lead quietly holding it all together—you might already be in the fallout of that tension.
And while you may not be the one who created the chasm, you’re still the one being asked to build a bridge across it.
You’ll want to equip yourself with language, structure, and clarity that protects your energy—and sharpens your leadership.
Because this isn't just a CEO problem. It's a systems problem, and everyone inside the system is impacted.
It’s not about personality. It’s about power. And, most importantly, it’s about whether you’ve built a business that can hold vision without asking someone else to overfunction in silence just to keep it from falling apart.
And that’s the part we never really learned how to do. Especially in founder-led spaces. Especially when we were told that charisma and grit could make up for anything.
They can’t.
So if any of this feels familiar—here’s where I suggest you start:
Ask yourself:
If you’re the CEO, ask:
Where am I casting a vision but withholding clarity?
What have I handed off without fully empowering?
Have I confused proximity with alignment?
If you’re the COO (or right hand), ask:
What unspoken labor am I holding that’s not reflected in my title, pay, or authority?
Where am I performing alignment instead of naming the gap?
What support or structure do I need to succeed—and have I asked for it?
You don’t have to answer these together. But you do have to take responsibility for your side of the compass.
That’s what creates movement. Not more meetings. Not more assumptions. But shared responsibility—and the clarity to hold it well.
The good news? This is solvable.
But not by another funnel. Not by another ops hire you onboard for a week and then expect to magically translate your brain.
You solve this by building a bridge between the work you’re doing in your head—and the systems that allow other people to carry it with you.
We’ve already named the chasm between vision and reality. Now it’s time to build the bridge.
This is where I bring in a tool called the Alignment Compass—a shared structure for ensuring the idea doesn’t outpace the infrastructure.
And no—I’m not claiming to have invented it from scratch. Like most good tools, it’s a synthesis. A distillation of what I’ve seen work, built on the shoulders of operational and leadership thinkers who came before me.
Because while the problem may seem simple, the solutions rarely are. They take intention. They take collaboration. And, most of all, they take clarity.
And clarity isn’t just a leadership trait. It’s a team-wide responsibility.
The Alignment Compass is built around six core conversations:
The Idea at Hand
What are we building, and what’s the central problem or possibility we’re responding to?Why Now
Why does this matter at this moment? What’s shifting? What’s opening?Alignment
Who’s involved? Who’s leading, who’s supporting, and who’s impacted?Markers
What key signals will let us know we’re on the right track?Movement Map
What are the actual tasks, timelines, and responsibilities—and how do they move?Impact Indicators
How will we measure success, beyond "we got it done"?
It sounds simple. It is. But the clarity it creates is anything but. And creating simplicity isn’t always easy.
When you start using a shared compass for every major initiative, a few things happen:
Assumptions drop away.
Accountability gets real.
Teams move faster—with less stress and more shared ownership.
Most importantly? The emotional labor of translating your ideas into action doesn’t fall on one person’s shoulders anymore.
It becomes shared. Supported. Designed.
Whether you’re the CEO casting the vision or the right hand trying to make it make sense, the Alignment Compass creates the kind of clarity that reduces friction and restores trust.
Because when structure and alignment are co-created—leadership becomes a partnership, not a pressure cooker.
That’s the shift. And it doesn’t start with dreaming bigger. It starts with designing better.
xo,
Brittany
P.S. This is exactly what I do inside the Strategy Lab—a focused, collaborative, facilitated session where we take your next big idea and translate it into a clear, operational roadmap your team can actually move on.
And right now, until April 14th, you can get a Strategy Lab bundled with access to my new private podcast, COO-fessions.
If you join as a founding member and choose the Strategy Lab tier, I’ll upgrade your session to a half-day VIP Strategy Lab—at no additional cost.
I’m not doing this because I’m desperate. I’m doing this because I know the climate we’re in.
Times are tough. We’re heading into a recession. And what we need more than ever is not just vision—but vision that gets built. Vision that solves real problems. That holds people. That works.
This is how I can help.
More time. More structure. More space to finally close the gap between your idea and the infrastructure it needs—without losing your people in the process.
Reserve your session → https://www.brittanylynnmartin.com/coo
