Quick gut check before we start.

Here’s a scene almost every founder has experienced.

You walk into the Monday meeting. You explain the priority, why it matters, who owns it and when it’s due.

Everyone smiles and nods along. Beautiful.

Then Friday arrives, and… crickets.

Or worse, you get something, but it’s nowhere close to what you asked for. You wanted a simple dashboard with the 5 numbers that run the business. They built a 47-tab spreadsheet that takes a black belt in finance to understand.

You stare at it and think: did anyone listen to me?

So you repeat yourself, louder this time.

MORE!

More Slack messages, more meetings, more check-ins, and a Google Doc titled FINAL_FINAL_V7_USE_THIS_ONE.

Here’s the hard truth, and I’m gonna hold your hand while I say this: Your people probably aren’t the problem. Your leadership is.

Telling someone to do something isn’t leadership.

Let’s get your big beautiful brain clear on the difference.

Someone has to move through 4 levels before they consistently do what you ask:

Most leaders stop at level 1. They said the words, so they assume the team understands the mission, agrees with the strategy, and wants to execute it. But you know what they say about assuming, right?

That’s like only texting someone an address and expecting they’ll show up on time wearing the right outfit.

To what? Why? What if they don’t want to?

Talking at someone is not the same as communicating.

Communication is whatever the other person can repeat, prioritize and execute when you’re not around.

Here’s where you lose people.

You told them. Congrats! You’ve achieved awareness.

Calm down though. It’s the lowest level there is. Sitting in your meeting doesn’t mean someone knows what matters, getting CC’d doesn’t mean they own the outcome, and a thumbs-up in Slack doesn’t mean they understand the assignment.

Let’s say you tell your marketing team, “We need to make this launch huge.”

What does huge mean?

And you wonder why everyone’s running around like headless chickens.

Your first job as a leader is to make the invisible visible.

We use the 6D’s: Driver. Deliverable. Deadline. Data. Decision Rights. Done.

Instead of “Sarah, launch the referral campaign ASAP,” try this:

“Improve sales” is a wish.

An ask sounds like this: “Take qualified calls from 100 to 130 a week without letting show rate drop below 70%.”

“Fix customer service” is a wish too.

The ask: “Respond to every customer within 2 business hours and cut unresolved tickets older than 48 hours in half.”

Now ask them to explain their assignment back to you. And yes, it’s gonna feel awkward the first few times. Do it anyway. Make sure their version matches yours.

A surgeon doesn’t mumble an order and hope the room heard it right. A pilot doesn’t call out a heading and assume the copilot caught the same number.

High-stakes teams repeat orders and rely on confirmations. Your business should too.

Ask:

If they can’t explain it simply, guess what? They don’t get it.

One of the most expensive phrases in business: “Yeah, yeah. I got it.”

Spoiler: they usually do not got it.

For example, you ask a manager to hire a number 2 so you can finally get out of operations. The manager thinks all they have to do is post a listing. You think the job is defining the role, building the scorecard, sourcing, interviewing and having someone running independently within 90 days.

Those are radically different definitions of success.

Or maybe you tell a salesperson to focus on higher-quality customers, so they immediately start turning away small accounts. Meanwhile, you wanted them to qualify on urgency, buying authority and ability to pay.

Do you see the difference?

You won’t know what someone heard until you ask them to repeat it back. So ask.

This is where leadership gets uncomfortable.

Someone can understand your plan perfectly and still think it’s a bad idea. Often, they will.

Maybe they think the deadline’s impossible. Or the customer doesn’t want this. Or something else matters more, or this exact strategy flopped last year, or you’ll change your mind by next Tuesday anyway.

Maybe this particular project could make their department look bad, and maybe they’ve learned that speaking up gets you labeled “not a team player.”

The list goes on.

So they nod in the meeting and slow-roll the work.

Silence isn’t buy-in.

And plenty of leaders say they want disagreement, but punish the first person who disagrees. So don’t be shocked when all the concerns only show up after the project fails.

Before you hand off execution, ask:

Buy-in doesn’t mean everyone’s vote counts the same. After all, someone still has to decide. But people are more likely to execute when they understand the reasoning, got to challenge it openly, and know the decision is now final.

Skip the endless consensus. Have a real debate and get real commitment.

Almost everyone ignores this level.

You can communicate perfectly.

They can understand the ask.

They can even agree it’s smart.

But if the system rewards them for something else, they’ll do that instead.

I’ve written this before: “Incentives drive actions. If they earn their money regardless of their performance, expect them to do less.”

Sounds harsh, but it’s how humans work.

If you pay a salesperson on closes alone, they’ll close bad-fit customers, discount hard and hand fulfillment a mess.

Measure marketing on views, and you’ll get attention that never turns into buyers.

Reward a support rep for closing tickets fast, and tickets will close fast. Whether anyone solved the problem is a horse of a different color.

Tell a manager to delegate, then praise them every time they swoop in and save the day? Enjoy the steady supply of fires.

Ask people to take initiative, then publicly punish 1 bad call? They’ll wait for permission forever.

Your comp plan is louder than your all-hands speech.

And incentives go way beyond money. People optimize for:

If doing what you ask means more work, more risk, and zero upside, why are you surprised it keeps sinking to the bottom of the list?

Founders miss this one constantly because their own incentives are so obvious. If the company doubles, your equity’s worth more. If the launch works, your reputation grows. If the business needs you less, your life gets better.

Your employee might get the same salary, a bigger workload, and a celebratory taco lunch.

Make sure that when you win, they win.

You can’t ask people to act like owners if they don’t share the upside.

Next time someone misses something, hold off on repeating yourself or calling them lazy.

Ask this instead:

Fix the level where communication breaks down.

Fuzzy ownership calls for a sharper brief, and a team that thinks the strategy’s dumb needs the debate before a new SOP. If the comp plan pays for the wrong behavior, change the comp plan before you schedule another meeting.

This test keeps everyone accountable, and makes accountability possible in the first place. And all this extra communication may not be received well initially.

That’s okay.

It’s worth pushing through the resistance.

Once someone has heard the ask, shown they understand it, committed to the decision, and has real upside in the outcome, but they still won’t execute? Now you’re having a performance conversation.

Good leaders don’t dodge that conversation either. They just make sure it’s the right one first.

If 1 person keeps missing the mark, you might have a people problem.

If everyone keeps dropping the ball, you probably have a leadership problem.

Talking is easy, but your real job is building the conditions where the right thing gets done without you having to crack the whip every time.

Clarity before accountability.
Understanding before judgment.
Debate before commitment.
Alignment before acceleration.

The goal is to build a business where people know the mission, understand the game, believe they can win and benefit when they do. That’s when execution stops being something you demand and becomes automatic.

This week, pick 1 important thing your team keeps dropping.

Skip “Why won’t they listen to me?”

And ask yourself: Where did I lose them?

-Codie