How to Manage Scope Without Killing Innovation

In this Mike on the Mic episode of The Better Leadership Team Show, I talk about why so many strategic plans fall apart just weeks after a powerful retreat.

You’ve experienced it. The leadership team aligns around a clear vision and three big priorities. Energy is high. Focus is sharp. And then, slowly, new ideas, “small projects,” and extra asks start creeping in.

Before you know it, your rocks are slipping, your team feels overwhelmed, and people start questioning why you bother planning at all.

In this episode, I break down:

• The real reason scope creep destroys execution

• Why visionary leaders are not the problem — but how we react to them matters

• The difference between initiatives, priorities, rocks, projects, and day-to-day work

• The hidden cultural cost of unmanaged scope

• Five practical disciplines to manage scope without killing innovation

If you want your leadership team to actually execute what you plan — without burning out your people or stalling strategy — this episode is for you.

Thanks for listening! Connect with us at mike-goldman.com/blog and on Instagram@mikegoldmancoach and on YouTube @Mikegoldmancoach

Transcript

Mike 0:02

Bring new ideas to the weekly meeting, to the monthly meeting, to the quarterly meeting, and allow for clear trade-offs I wanna give you some safe phrases that you could use when responding to that visionary leader. Things like, I love that idea, but to fit it in this quarter, here's what I'd have to pause. Are you okay with that trade off? Help me understand is, is this a new priority? or if, I should swap it with something else on my list. And again, by saying yes to this, let's figure out what we need to say no to.

Mike Goldman 0:54

You made it to the better leadership team show, the place where you learn how to surround yourself with the right people, doing the right things. So you can grow your business without losing your mind. I'm your host and leadership team coach, Mike Goldman. I'm going to show you how to improve top and bottom line growth, fulfillment, and the value your company adds to the world by building a better leadership team. All right, let's go.

Meet the Real Villain: Scope Creep & Shiny Objects

The Visionary Leader’s Blind Spots (and Why It’s Not Their Fault)

Create a Shared Vocabulary: Initiatives, Priorities, Rocks & KPIs

The Hidden Cost of ‘Projects’ and Overloaded Rocks

5 Disciplines to Manage Scope Without Killing Innovation

Discipline 1–2: Define ‘Done’ + Build an Idea Backlog

Discipline 3: A Change Protocol & the ‘What Are We Saying No To?’ Question

Discipline 4–5: Separate In vs On the Business + Coach Language & Boundaries

Make It Stick: Using Your Meeting Rhythm as a Scope Gate

Wrap-Up: Immediate Next Steps & Final Takeaways

Mike 1:27

In this episode, I want to talk about how we invest significant time as a leadership team. We create a beautiful annual day plan or a 90 day plan with priorities, and as soon as we create it, we start killing it. The plan falls apart as quickly as it was created. I don't wanna talk about why, but let me lay out a scenario. So you and your team go off on a two day annual or quarterly planning retreat, there is great energy. You align, around a small number of priorities. Everyone feels focused. You leave that room holding hands, singing kumbaya, and you think you've just done something critically important, and by the way you have. But what teams don't realize is. While that's not easy, it's not easy to get the senior leadership team together and agree on a vision, agree on a direction, agree on a plan to get there, agree on what the three most important priorities are for the company over the next year and over the next 90 days, and who's accountable. That's not an easy thing to do, but in the grand scheme of things. That's the easy part because fast forward two weeks after that wonderful retreat and everybody's drowning again, your quarterly priorities, and I call them rocks are slipping. people are rolling their eyes at another new initiative and another shiny object we're chasing, and, and all of a sudden that all that alignment. We had really quickly just goes away. Now, who's the villain here? Why, does that happen? And it's not because of any one person. It's because of scope creep. Now sometimes that's driven by a visionary founder or CEO that has lots of ideas, but that's not always the case. And even if it is the case, it doesn't mean it's that visionary founders, it doesn't mean they're to blame for that scope creep. And I'll tell, I'll tell you what this starts to look like and see if this sounds familiar to you. So it's a week or two after that wonderful retreat where everyone aligned and all of a sudden. Additional work starts creeping in. But it doesn't, it doesn't creep in as, Hey, I know we agreed on these three priorities, but I wanna add a fourth. That doesn't happen all that often. What happens is we start using creative language. It's like, oh, we also need to implement a new CRM. Um, and I know that's not, not one of our priorities, but that's not a priority. That's a project. Or I also need you to do, you know, these five things, but that's not a new quarterly priority. That's not a new rock. That's, that's part of your day to day. no this isn't, this isn't a different rock. it's just going deeper on the same rock you were working on. All of those things add scope. The consequences are leaders can't balance their day to day with the ever expanding list of things. That's never ending. Every time a leadership team gets together. If they're having a productive conversation, it's gonna result in new things that get added onto the list, and all of a sudden scope gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger rocks and priorities balloon into monsters that could never actually be finished. You start spending so much time working on the business that you forget about what you need to do to work in the business and hit the quarterly targets and your P&L goals. The team starts to lose faith in planning and they say, you know, why do we bother? Creating our, our annual plan and our quarterly plan. It's all just gonna change anyway. It's all just gonna go to hell anyway. Now, why does this happen? And as I said, very often it does start with a visionary, entrepreneur, founder, CEO, that's leading the organization. Now I wanna be really careful with my words here. It may start with them, but I'm not saying they're to blame that, that it, it, it's really important to have a visionary leader within the organization that has lots of new ideas, that sees opportunities that others don't. Someone that hates missing out on potential wins. There's nothing wrong with that, but that thinking typically comes with some blind spots. That visionary leader doesn't necessarily understand that you know, that they don't understand how much. All of these little things, seemingly little things add to the work you and your team have to do every day. It is easy to confuse idea generation with execution capacity. We can't execute on every idea, even the great ones that people come up with. And sometimes that that visionary leader kind of gets bored with the existing plan mid-quarter. You know, we've already talked about that. You're already moving forward on that. I'm talking about the next. Big idea, and this is one of the reasons that I stress in, in the planning I do with my clients, is a small number of priorities and the idea of a 90 day sprint, a quarterly rock, as the most important part of planning because that quarterly rock allows us to focus. In a 90 day period, chances are the world's not gonna change all that much, and your industry's not gonna change all that much. And in a 90 day sprint, there's a fire up your butt and a sense of urgency to get it done. And in 90 days, it's a. Short enough time that the world's not gonna change. And it gives us urgency, but it's a long enough time to add real value. But when we keep adding on top of it and adding on top of it and adding on top of it, we lose that ability to add real value.'cause we're constantly just working and tweaking without delivering anything. And that visionary leader really feels like they're helping. But the teams feel whiplash and, and overwhelm. And again, I know I keep sounding like I'm blaming this on the visionary leader, but it's not about the visionary leader, it's about how the team reacts to that visionary leader.'cause by the way, without the visionary leader, there's no exciting vision. So we need all those things. But if we're not careful. They really, really hurt the team. And that scope creep kills your plan. So let's start talking about what, what you do about it. And I wanna start. Just with some definitions and, and they're, these are definitions I use, you don't have to use these definitions, but it's important to have clear definitions and a clear vocabulary for when you are talking about working in the business and working on the business. When you're talking about planning versus execution, if you are. Vocabulary isn't clear. You wind up with those things like, oh, this isn't another priority. This is just a project. So we've gotta be clear and, and I'll start with something. If you listen to a lot of my podcasts, you've heard me say over and over again, I have, three different words I use for a priority. And the three different words depend on timeframe, and I'll start with the longest timeframe. When I do planning with my clients, we have three year priorities and there's typically between two and four, three year priorities for the company and, and a priority over three years. I call an initiative. There's also an annual priority. An annual priority isn't different than the three year priority. It's the next 12 month chunk of that three year initiative and a priority. That's annual. I very simply call a priority, and then there's the 90 day priority. Again, the 90 day priority is not a different thing than your annual priority. It's the next 90 days you want. alignment between short term and long term. The quarterly priority I call rocks. So there's rocks, priorities, and, and initiatives. Quarter year, three year. For each rock, there is a rock plan with milestones. For each rock there is a measurable finish line, and what I really challenge my clients to do is that finish line is not a finish line. That said I've, my finish line is I got these five tasks done in 90 days. The finish line is value. It's some measurable value, it's some meaningful outcome. Now let's talk about some more definitions. There are also these tasks that come up day to day. Hey, you know, go look into that by next Tuesday. We call those who, what, when, who's accountable? What are you doing? When is it getting done by? Those tend to be more tactical. I'm gonna set up this meeting to discuss this issue by next Tuesday. The other vocabulary I use that I stole from, oh God, who did I steal it from? Um. Oof. I'll put it in the, show notes if, if I remember, but it's the idea of working in the business versus working on the business. Working on the business means what are we doing to take the business to the next level? That's, those tend to be more strategic things. That's where the three initiatives, the annual priorities and the quarterly rocks come from. Then there's working in the business the day to day. Those we measure not through rocks and, and, and, and initiatives and priorities. Those we measure through key performance indicators, that those are things like what's on the P&L or the number of sales meetings you, you've set up. Now the idea of a project, and this is the thing that comes up mostly that screws up scope, you know, you know, a project, it really doesn't fit in there. If a project is anything, it may be a bigger idea that includes multiple rocks, but they're not separate from rocks. You may have a, and I'll, you know, a, a project to implement a new ERP. But there will be a 90 day rock to take the next step in implementing the ERP. You don't have three priorities for the year, but then another 12 projects. Again, that's the way we have this delusion that we've aligned around a small number of priorities, but if we've added 12 other projects, we really haven't aligned about anything. So I wanna say a little bit more about the cost of not managing to the scope of those. And, and let's talk specifically about the scope of the quarterly rocks, because that's where, that's where stuff really happens. That's where things get executed. So for an individual leader, if they wind up with too many rocks, if you leave the quarterly planning meeting and as a senior leader, you're accountable for one or two rocks, but then all of a sudden three more rocks and two more projects get added onto your list. You just have too many priorities and, and you're making shallow progress, if any progress at all. You're constantly reprioritizing and, and, feeling overload and burnout, you know, at a company level, strategic initiatives stall. Those three year initiatives, those annual priorities stall your quarterly rock stall and the quarterly rocks drag over multiple quarters that that delay your ability to get real value. And at a cultural level, there is quiet cynicism. You know, these rocks won't will only matter until the next shiny new things happen. And people actually stop telling the truth about their capacity because they know a whole bunch of crap's gonna be added on later. So they're gonna say they don't have the capacity for anymore. So. So let's talk about five disciplines to manage scope without killing innovation. So remember that visionary leader is not the problem. It's how we react to the visionary leader. We don't wanna kill innovation. So discipline number one is defining what done means upfront for every annual priority, for every, every quarterly rock. For a quarterly rock, as I said, what exactly does success look like? At the end of 90 days, how will we measure it? Let's get explicit about what's in scope and really importantly, what's out of scope. By doing that, it becomes easier to see when a new ask doesn't fit or when a new ask expands scope. So very simply, discipline number one is defining what done means upfront. Discipline number two is such a simple one, but most companies miss, and it's creating a visible idea, backlog for the team. But it really, mostly for the visionary, you know, the visionary leader, the founder. The entrepreneur will keep having ideas and that's not a bug, that's a feature. We want those ideas, but what we need to do is have a place to put those ideas if we can't execute on them. Right now, very often what happens is the senior leader, the visionary, brings a new idea and, and the rest of the organization says we just, we used to have the bandwidth for that, but the visionary leader knows it's important, so they push back and eventually they get their way and. Scope creep happens. Well, we need a very simple idea. Parking lot, you know, a running list of ideas of, of new ideas that don't quite fit into what we're trying to get done in the next 90 days. There are great potential ideas that are, that we don't wanna lose, and very often that visionary leader will be satisfied if they know that the idea's not getting thrown away when you say, we don't have the bandwidth for it right now, and you wanna move on. They believe, and they're probably right, that that idea's going to be forgotten about. But if we have a very simple spreadsheet. Some kind of tool that allows you to say, that's a really interesting idea. Let's put it on the idea backlog log, and we'll take a look at it again when we do our planning for next quarter and in your quarterly planning sessions. You review that idea backlog, maybe even in your monthly check-ins. Go back to the idea backlog. Don't forget about it. There's some great ideas there, but don't let it screw up the execution of all of your 90 day rocks and your ability to see value from that. So it's a very simple language shift. From the leadership team back to that visionary leader that says, that sounds like a great idea. Let's add it to the idea backlog and evaluate it when we're in our next planning session. So the benefit of that is those ideas are honored and not lost. But the current 90 day day plan, does it get blown up every Tuesday in your weekly meeting. Discipline number three. Install a simple change protocol, so. We're not saying no to every new idea. There are times that in the midst of a quarter there's an idea that comes up that's more important than something you're already working on or an idea that comes up that adds value. But it may make what you're working on a little bit more complex. It may take that quarterly rock that was, you know, a certain size and it may blow it to 15, 20, 20, 25% bigger. We're not saying no to every new ideas, but we're not casually adding them. We have a protocol, so an example of a protocol could be, you know, any new chunk of work. That is not part of our day-to-day or not part of the priority. The, the, the quarterly rocks as we've defined them, that we're gonna discuss those either in our weekly accountability meeting with our senior leaders or in our monthly meeting, or if it's really important, we'll discuss it in an ad hoc meeting. We are gonna discuss it, but the leadership team. Needs to approve any scope changes to rocks. The leadership team, members of the leadership team should get very used to asking this really simple question. Great idea comes up to add to scope. Hey, by saying yes to this, what are we saying no to? So that when you're adding to scope. You are not just assuming everybody's got another two hours in their day. If you're adding to scope, you are looking to discover where you could deprioritize something that may be in the day to day or something else, in not rock or in another rock. So by saying yes to this, what are we saying no to? Tie your planning and communication rhythm, your rhythm of senior leadership team meetings, which may be daily huddles, weekly accountability meetings, monthly check-ins, quarterly planning, annual retreats. Use those meetings as a gate for any scope changes. You could absolutely change scope. You will change scope, but don't just casually do that. The benefit of that is you're not saying no to every new idea, but you are forcing very conscious trade-offs. Fourth discipline, and I've already kind of alluded to this, but separate out clearly. Within each function on the leadership team, what is the, the day-to-day working in the business, from the working on the business, the rocks, the annual priorities, and, and try to, you know, for, as a leader, try to size both of those. Try to get an understanding roughly what percent of your time is day-to-day work. What percent of your time is rock work? Or another way to say that is what percent of your time is working in the business versus working on the business Now, as you strengthen your team, I hope as a senior leader, if that's who you are, I hope as a senior leader you are over time. Figuring out ways to spend more and more of your time working on the business and less time working in the business.'cause your team is taking care of all the in the business. But by separating those out and understanding about how much time you need to spend on each, you could make the right decisions given your day, day-to-day workload, you know, and the rocks you've already got. What's realistic? How much bandwidth do you have? If we add something, what else is gonna slip? It is gonna allow you to better push back in a data-driven way rather than always sounding negative. And then the fifth discipline is coaching the visionary leader and the team. On language and boundaries. And again, I've, I've already alluded to some of this, but I wanna focus the fifth discipline on specific language and bound boundaries. And you know, first, if, if you're listening to this and you are the visionary, you are that founder, entrepreneur, CEO, visionary, I wanna invite you to see a pattern. You know, see that pattern of when I do x, when I, you know, bombard the team with new ideas, what happens to the team? And if they're always pushing back, is it because I've got the wrong team or might I need to look in the mirror? Realize that maybe I'm causing the pushback and I'm causing overwhelm and I'm causing things to, to never get done.'cause there never seems to be a finish line because I keep moving it. So, for you, the visionary, I wanna offer up those alternatives of allow your idea to be captured in a backlog. Bring new ideas to the weekly meeting, to the monthly meeting, to the quarterly meeting, and allow for clear trade-offs for the team is I wanna give you some safe phrases that you could use when responding to that visionary leader. Things like, I love that idea, but to fit it in this quarter, here's what I'd have to pause. Are you okay with that trade off? Help me understand is, is this a new priority? or, or if, if I should swap it with something else on my list. And again, by saying yes to this, let's figure out what we need to say no to. A big part of this is making sure that you are cultivating a leadership team that has the ability to have healthy conflict, that could be open with each other, that could face the brutal facts, that could be vulnerable with each other and say, Hey, I'm not sure I could do that. I need help. Great teams, open, honest, brutally honest teams could say, we can't do all of that in 90 days. And they could say that without fear. They could say, if we try to do that, we're gonna screw up these three other rocks. And they could do that without fear. So let's quickly before we wrap up, relate this back to. The planning and communication rhythm that I briefly mentioned earlier, and I wanna show you how some of this fits within the rhythm. So there are in, in the work I do with my clients, I typically have two day annual and quarterly retreats and planning sessions. That's where these rocks, these annual priorities, these rocks are defined and that's where. Done is defined what's in scope and what's outta scope is defined. That's where we use and start building the backlog. There are monthly check-in meetings within the quarter and in there you could have a quick check of any proposed, maybe not so quick a check of any proposed scope changes, you know, any urgent idea that truly can't wait. And any of your weekly accountability meetings, it, it's a time for holding each other accountable to the current scope, to challenging if you're sneaking in new work that should go in the backlog. The value of of, of the planning effort. Is not the beautiful two days you spend having your annual replanning planning retreat or your quarterly planning session. The beauty is, is what happens in the in, in the 88 days after that. It is so easy to leave a planning session and feel like you've accomplished so much and wow, I, we've never been so aligned. Yeah, but man, the harder part, as I said, is after that, every day after that. So let me offer a few simple steps in my call to action to wrap this up. Things you can do right away. For the Visionary leader in the next weekly leadership team meeting or monthly meeting, ask your team honestly. Are we adding too much to our plates? After planning, what could we put in an idea backlog instead. For leadership teams? If you haven't done it already, for each rock you're accountable for, clearly own what's in scope and what's outta scope. If you want a great company. You need a great leadership team and great leadership teams protect their focus so they can actually finish what they start and add consistent value throughout the year versus doing a whole bunch of busy work and never getting anywhere. If you want a great company, you need a great leadership team, and I hope I got you closer to that great leadership team today. Look forward to talking to you again soon.