Episode 30 · Aligned & Amplified with Jaime Ellithorpe, 540 Strategies
Why Businesses Keep Solving the Same Problems
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Jaime Ellithorpe of 540 Strategies and I spent half an hour on the thing I keep coming back to: the gap between what leadership decides and what actually happens.
My work started in corporate communications, which put me in the room for the decisions and then let me watch what became of them. The pattern was always the same. Leaders were satisfied the strategy was clear. But meaning changed as it travelled. Assumptions filled the gaps. Handoffs failed quietly. Teams read the same priorities differently and each acted rationally on their own reading.
We talk about why middle managers carry more of this than anyone acknowledges, what it takes to lead through influence rather than oversight, and why so many organizations keep solving the same problem instead of the gap underneath it.
If a good strategy is not producing the results you expected, this is the conversation.
If you would rather look at your own organization than listen to me talk about it, the Workaround Audit is a two-minute version of the same question.
What they covered
- 00:00Sayre’s background in communications
- 01:00Where communication breaks down inside organizations
- 02:20Making execution as strong as your strategy
- 03:20Why middle managers are critical to performance
- 05:30Communicating up and down the organization
- 07:05Why the magic happens in the middle
- 07:30Influence, managing up and difficult conversations
- 08:30Scaling teams without micromanaging
- 09:00Adapting without losing your through line
- 10:30Why businesses are not changing fast enough
- 12:30Stop making decisions on assumptions
- 14:00Transparency during uncertainty
- 15:00Why value matters more than features and price
- 17:00Bringing context into business decisions
- 19:15Why leaders need more well-rounded conversations
- 20:30Solve the gap, not the recurring problem
- 22:00Business is about more than the dashboard
- 22:20Have the courage to trust your gut