The Blind Spot Under Your Best Leader

Most initiatives don’t fail because the strategy is wrong. They fail because execution becomes inconsistent after kickoff—when the work spreads, pressure rises, and translation occurs through layers.

That’s why failure rates remain stubbornly high. McKinsey has cited research indicating that roughly 70% of corporate transformations fail.

Executives know this. The part that’s easy to miss is where the risk hides. It’s rarely under the weakest leader. Everyone watches that.

The more common blind spot is under your best leader—the one you trust, the one who has earned runway, the one you don’t want to second-guess.

Trust creates a visibility gap:

• You accept clean summaries instead of inspecting the mechanics.

• You probe less because it feels like interference.

• You assume the team is translating direction consistently because the leader is strong.

Then you get late-stage symptoms that don’t look “dramatic” until they’re expensive:

• decisions quietly reopen after they were “settled”

• rework happens without anyone naming it

• dependencies pile up and timelines slide

• the team stays busy, but outcomes don’t convert

This isn’t about effort; it’s about consistency.

And inconsistency is measurable. The Project Management Institute has reported that $97M is wasted for every $1B invested due to poor project performance.

What’s actually breaking 

People can agree in a meeting and still operate differently when turning direction into:

• what matters this week

• what decisions get made now vs later

• who truly owns the outcome vs who is “supporting”

Those differences rarely surface in steering meetings. They show up in reopened decisions, slow handoffs, and “we’re close” updates that repeat.

The executive dilemma 

You want to validate execution without:

• undermining a respected leader

• triggering defensiveness

• turning the initiative into a political event

So most leaders wait for lagging indicators (missed milestones, missed forecast, customer impact). By then, the options are blunt.

The better move: validate the team—quietly

You’re not auditing the leader. You’re validating whether the initiative team consistently translates direction.

Try three checks:

1. Priorities: Are the top 2–3 priorities the same across the team this week, or are parallel agendas emerging?

2. Decisions: Do they stick—or do they quietly reopen in side channels?

3. Ownership: Is ownership crisp—or diffused by dependencies and “waiting on”?

If any of the three are unstable, the initiative is already in trouble—even if every update appears green. 

Try this: in your next meeting, ask: “What are the top priorities this week? What decisions are locked, and who owns what?”

If you get different answers, you just found the problem.