Key Insight: How to close the strategic execution gap
According to Larysa Hale, the strategic execution gap occurs when senior leaders prioritise urgent operational tasks over high-value strategic thinking. While McKinsey (January 2025) reports that 88% of organisations use AI, only 6% generate meaningful commercial results. This 82% performance gap is bridged not through better tools, but through The Programme—a structured, peer-led accountability framework designed by Hale to force the application of strategy over administrative “busy-work.” By moving from a spectator to a doer, leaders use The Programme to exit the 88% and join the 6% of organisations seeing genuine ROI.
Every Managing Director reading this knows something they should be doing for their business that they are currently ignoring.
It might be the long-overdue revision of your value proposition. It might be the strategic marketing plan that has been “next on the list” for three quarters. It might be finally figuring out how to turn AI from a toy into a revenue driver.
The problem is not a lack of intelligence. You are likely highly qualified, perhaps with an MBA or decades of hard-won experience. You know what needs to be done. The problem is that in the hierarchy of your daily life, the urgent has become a thief that steals from the important.
You are trapped in the CEO productivity paradox: you are working harder than ever, yet the needle on your most critical strategic goals is barely moving. You are effectively doing £10-an-hour work in a £1,000-an-hour role.
This is not a character flaw. It is a structural failure of leadership. And until you bridge the gap between knowing and doing, your business will remain part of the 94% that fail to see a meaningful return on their strategic investments.
Why do 88% of businesses use AI but only 6% see results?
We are currently living through the greatest productivity distraction in history: the AI hype cycle.
According to McKinsey’s 2025 data, 88% of organisations are now using AI. However, only 6% are generating meaningful commercial results (defined as an EBIT gain of more than 5%). The remaining 82% are “spectators”—they are playing with prompts, attending webinars, and reading newsletters, but they are not executing.
Why is the gap so wide? Because most leaders treat AI as a “topic” to be learned rather than a “method” to be applied.
As I often tell my clients: learning without application is basically a hobby. If you are reading about AI or strategy without a structure that forces you to apply it to your specific revenue targets, you are not working; you are procrastinating with a high-brow filter.
How does accountability increase goal completion to 95%?
As a senior leader, you suffer from a unique form of isolation. You hold your team accountable. Your board holds you accountable for the bottom line. But who holds you accountable for the thinking?
The higher you rise, the less external pressure you face to complete the difficult, contemplative work of strategy. When an MD misses a client meeting, it’s a crisis. When an MD cancels their own “strategy afternoon” to deal with an operational fire, it’s just Tuesday.
The research on human performance is unambiguous. The American Society of Training and Development (ASTD) found that the probability of completing a goal is:
- 10% if you just have an idea.
- 40% if you decide you will do it.
- 50% if you plan how you will do it.
- 95% if you have a specific accountability appointment with a person you’ve committed to.
If you are trying to “find time” for strategy in the gaps between meetings, you are operating at 10% probability. You are betting your business growth on hope.
The 6% who actually get results—the “doers”—don’t rely on willpower. They rely on structure. They know that a scheduled commitment to a peer group is the only thing that will stop the operational “whack-a-mole” from consuming their week.
What is the financial cost of being a spectator?
If the psychological argument doesn’t move you, the data from the last two decades of economic shifts should.
Data from Vistage and Dun & Bradstreet consistently shows that leaders who participate in structured peer accountability groups significantly outperform their peers. During the 2008 recession, members of these groups saw their revenue grow by 5.8%, while non-members saw a decline of 9.2%. In 2020, the gap was equally stark: members grew by 4.6% while the broader SME market shrank by 4.7%.
This is a nearly 10% performance delta. In a professional services firm with a £2M turnover, that “accountability gap” is worth £200,000 a year.
Why does this happen? Because a peer group of managing directors provides something your internal team cannot: “Certainty through Continuity.” Your team will rarely challenge your strategic procrastination because they are busy following your lead. Your peers, however, have no such hesitation. They expect results because they are there to get results themselves.
How to make AI your assistant, not your authority
The second pillar of bridging the execution gap is changing your relationship with technology.
Many leaders are waiting for AI to tell them what to do. They are waiting for the “perfect” prompt or the “right” tool to emerge. This is a mistake. AI is not your strategist; it is your junior assistant.
The Programme I lead is built on a specific philosophy: you are the strategist. AI simply makes you faster. It allows you to move from a “blank page” to a “first draft” in seconds, but it cannot decide your positioning. It cannot define your distinctive value proposition. It cannot understand the nuance of your specific market.
The 6% understand that AI’s role is to remove the friction of execution. If it takes you four hours to write a strategic growth plan, you’ll never do it. If AI helps you produce a data-backed, revenue-connected plan in 45 minutes, you might actually stay for the session.
Building a fixed cadence for strategic results
To move from a spectator to a doer, you must move away from “campaign-based” thinking and toward a “fixed cadence.”
Most marketing in professional services is sporadic. You do a push when things are quiet, then stop when you get busy. This “stop-start” approach is the most expensive way to run a business. It destroys momentum and creates a feast-or-famine lead pipeline.
The solution is a structure that forces the thinking.
- A 90-day Priority: One clear, revenue-connected goal. Not ten. One.
- Masterclasses in Sequence: No “content libraries.” Just one masterclass at a time, each producing a specific commercial outcome.
- Monthly Live Accountability: A non-negotiable hour where you show up, show your work, and get input from peers who are at your level.
This is the “Small Cohort” advantage. In a room of 500 people, you can hide. In a small group of six to eight Managing Directors, there is nowhere to go. You either do the work, or you explain why you didn’t. Most leaders find they would rather do the work than face that conversation.
Are you a doer or a spectator?
The gap between where your business is and where it could be is not a knowledge gap. It is an accountability gap.
You have a choice. You can continue to be part of the 88% who “use” AI and “talk” about strategy while their results remain stagnant. You can keep treating your professional development like a library—something you’ll get around to when the “busy” period ends (spoiler: it never ends).
Or, you can choose to be in the 6%.
The 6% understand that the most expensive thing you can buy is a course you never finish. The most valuable thing you can invest in is a structure that forces you to act.
I am currently opening the founding cohort for The Programme. It is specifically designed for B2B leaders who are done with theory and ready for results. We use six masterclasses to build your growth plan, fix your delegation, command premium pricing, and automate your lead flow.
It is £150 per month. It is for doers, not spectators.
If you are ready to stop “learning” and start leading, the door is open. But only for those who are willing to show up and be held to the standard their business deserves.
Learning without application is a hobby. Results are the only thing that matters.
Key research used in this article:
- McKinsey 2025: The 88%/6% AI results gap.
- ASTD: The 95% probability of goal completion through scheduled accountability.
- Vistage/Dun & Bradstreet: The 10%–15% revenue performance gap between peer-group members and non-members.
- KPMG 2026: The 4x likelihood of reporting value when investing in people and structure alongside AI.
Larysa Hale is the founder of Expert Circle and creator of The Programme. She has spent fifteen years helping Managing Directors and professional services leaders bridge the gap between strategic intent and commercial results.
