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The New Friction Point: Strategy Bottlenecks in the Middle

  • Writer: Max Bowen
    Max Bowen
  • Nov 17
  • 1 min read

What’s happening Even with clear executive alignment, many strategies are stalling in the “frozen middle”. Managers caught between business as usual pressure, unclear priorities, and fear of making the wrong trade-offs.

Why it matters Most execution drag isn’t at the edges but in the middle layer where priorities collide. If that layer doesn’t move, nothing downstream does.

What to do next week (3 quick diagnostics)

  1. Priority Compression Check Ask each manager to list their top 3 priorities.If you get more than 3, or they don’t match the strategy, you’ve found a bottleneck.

  2. Decision Rights Snapshot Run a 5-minute pulse: “What decisions do you think you own vs. actually own?” Misaligned decision rights are the #1 killer of execution speed.

  3. Signal-to-Noise Review Pull one team’s reporting for the past month. Count how much is operational noise vs. strategy progress. If less then 10% links to strategic outcomes, middle management is drowned in the wrong metrics.

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