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Key Takeaways When progress slows down inside a company, leaders often blame their teams and press them to move faster. But slow execution is rarely an effort issue. It’s more of a clarity issue.
Clarity usually breaks at the handoff point long before anyone even notices the impact. When handoffs break, everything else slows down, even when the team is working hard.
A handoff should answer three basic questions: Who owns the next step? What does “finished” look like? When will the next step be completed?
Work inside a company moves from one person to another and from one group to another. These transitions seem small, but they determine the speed and confidence of everything that follows. When they go well, work generally feels smooth. But when they go wrong, teams feel stuck even when everyone is truly giving their best effort.
I remember a time when I supported a team that cared a lot about doing good work. They prepared well, and they definitely put in the time. They did all they could to move their projects forward every day. When progress kept slipping, and leaders started asking why simple tasks took so long, it caused frustration.
From the outside, it seemed like there was a performance problem, but inside the team, it felt like a trust problem. People were just fed up with feeling watched or judged for delays they didn’t create or own.
They just wanted one simple thing, and that was for work to move from start to finish without confusion or continuous rework.
Related: Why Your Team Works Hard But Still Moves Slowly (and How to Fix It)
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