Growth Plans? Easy. Owning The Risk? Another Story...

Signal & Stakes Season 2, Episode 3

Episode Title: Growth Plans Are Easy. Owning the Risk Is the Job.

Episode Description: Any leadership team can write a growth plan. The harder question is who owns it when reality pushes back.

In this episode, Raja Walia and Akande Davis break down why growth strategy fails before execution ever starts, and why leadership accountability is the piece most organizations refuse to address directly. They cover why assumptions behind a growth plan rarely get interrogated before approval, why operational teams are fighting for a seat at the table, and what it actually means to own the downside of a strategy, not just the upside.

Key topics covered in this episode:

Growth plans fail because of flawed assumptions, not poor execution. Harvard Business Review and Wharton research both point to leadership assumptions as the primary driver of strategy failure, not the teams executing the plan.

Credibility is lost when leaders do not own the risk early. Waiting until the ninth hour to raise concerns, or letting execution teams absorb the blame for a broken strategy, is how leaders lose their standing.

Operational teams want a seat at the table because they see the disconnect between strategy and what the technology and team can actually deliver. Ignoring that input is a leadership failure.

Assumptions behind a failed growth plan are almost never revisited. Organizations move on, blame execution, and repeat the same cycle.

The organizations that scale are not just ambitious. They interrogate the strategy before it ships and name who owns the assumptions.

Note: Signal & Stakes was previously published as Call It RevOps. The rebrand reflects a deliberate shift in the conversation, from tactical execution and operational how-tos to strategic decision making and the consequences that follow when senior leaders get it right or get it wrong. Same hosts, same honesty, different altitude. 

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Signal & Stakes is a podcast for people who sit inside the decisions that shape how companies grow, compete, and survive. Each episode surfaces a real decision, the signal that was there, what was at stake, and what happened next. Not advice. Consequence.

Signal & Stakes is hosted by Raja Walia, CEO of GNW Consulting, and Akande Davis, VP of Operations at GNW Consulting.

Signal & Stakes is produced by GNW Consulting, a strategic marketing technology and revenue operations agency helping enterprise organizations make sense of their existing MarTech investments. Through the GNW Orchestration Framework, GNW Consulting helps companies connect board-level priorities to day-to-day execution, identify where AI creates leverage across go-to-market operations, and determine where human judgment should lead. Learn more.

Subscribe to Signal & Stakes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all major podcast platforms. New episodes drop monthly. Follow GNW Consulting on LinkedIn for episode releases, show updates, and content on marketing technology and go-to-market strategy. Watch full episodes on YouTube.

Transcript

Akande Davis 0:02

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of Call It RevOps. And today we're talking about why growth plans are easy, but actually owning the risk is a job in and of itself, or even the real job. So every leadership has a team to make a bold move in growth. You want you want to grow aggressively, you want to make it happen. But planning that out's pretty straightforward, right, Raja? It's really about the risk that's associated with it. How are people able to navigate and manage that?

Raja Walia 0:29

Yeah, I mean, I don't think we're talking about execution at this point, right? And I one of the things about growth plans just in general is anyone can create one. I think you can probably just go to GPT and type in, give me a growth plan for 2026. It can actually create it very, very fast. The problem is always about who owns that growth plan. And if it doesn't fail, or I mean, if it doesn't fail, if it does fail, or if it succeeds, who's gonna take credit and who's gonna kind of get thrown under the bus, right? So growth plans don't really fail because teams don't work hard. They fail because at a leadership standpoint, um, we don't own the downside, only the upside, right? Leadership. Everyone wants to sting the praises and if something goes right, and everyone wants to point the fingers when something goes wrong. Yeah, so everyone signs up and is on board on the upside, but no one, no one signs on on what breaks, what happens. And honestly, like when reality kind of pushes back, because a growth plan is is good, everyone should have one. But what do you do when it doesn't work? How do you pivot? How do you modify? And who's at fault of that? And I know that sounds a little bit harsh, but ultimately, if you're a leader and you're in the and you consider yourself a leader and you're in the C-suite, you have to own it, right? It's not your team that didn't execute, like execution of a growth plan, I think is relatively easy. The strategy is what molds it. So, as a leader in the space, you know, what gives you credibility is coming to the table and saying, Yep, you know what, we have to pivot, we have to change. This didn't work. I own it. Let's move. And this is what we did to make it right. Not just, oh, we could, I don't know why ABM is not working for us. Maybe it's not a really good strategy, you know. Like that's that's ultimately what it is. Maybe it worked at your previous job and you came into a new one and you tried to do it again, and maybe it's a completely different market, completely different audience. That's okay, right? And that's how we learn.

Akande Davis 2:19

Yeah, I mean, it ambition is not a bad thing. You can have big targets and aggressive timelines. That's not really the problem. It ends up being if the assumptions behind the plan don't hold up, like you're saying, if ABM isn't really the way to go, somebody has to take ownership when that goes wrong and the pivot needs to happen. And yeah, like the work's not impossible, right? People can execute very straightforward. So the first, maybe the first kind of point on this is why do growth plans, when you're mapping them out at the C-suite, they feel like great, like it's very exciting. People are confident in it. What is that shift uh from being a clean, nicely put together growth plan to being something that's actually actionable and when all the red flags maybe start popping up?

Raja Walia 3:02

Yeah. And you know, one of the things that you mentioned was well, a lot of the movement behind operational teams, and you know, like the reason behind RevOps and go-to-market operations, and a lot of these operational teams are wanting a seat at the table because of what you're highlighting, right? It's because, well, how does it fail? Does it fail on execution? And really, it's more importantly, you have to understand what real ownership looks like at a C-suite level or a leadership level. Let's just say leadership level, because growth doesn't end careers. When you lose your credibility from a strategy perspective, that's what does it. And what operational teams are saying is like this strategy is not going to work in our environment. And as leaders in the space, we have to understand it and respect it. We just can't push a growth plan or a strategy or whatever you want to call it, you know, kind of like fitting a square in a round hole. Like it's just not going to work. And that's why all this buzz about operational teams saying, hey, we want to see that table, we want to, they don't want to talk about the business goals. They want to talk about why that growth plan or strategy is not going to be implemented correctly. And really, when it's when it does fail, that's when your credibility goes. So it's a combination of like that's the entire idea behind why operational teams are saying, we want a say in something. And as a leader at the CC at C-suite or VP or SVP, whatever, whatever leadership looks like at your organization, you're going to lose your credit credibility when it's not executed correctly because your growth plan didn't align with whatever technology that you have at your organization.

Akande Davis 4:37

Yeah. I mean, in many, in many respects, I'm reminded of a uh Fire Festival that happened three or four years ago. There was, you know, a great strategy, a lot of marketing. Everyone thought that that, wow, this is going to be incredible. But the critical piece was the execution that missed. And it the strategy didn't align with what was actually capable, with what you know, boots on the ground can actually do. So that kind of brings us to the hidden truth of all of this. Um, most strategy actually fails before the execution even starts. And, you know, again, that Firefest analogy that failed before it even started. And while we didn't necessarily know it, the leadership, I think, could start seeing signs of that pretty quick. So it's not anecdotal. This is backed by the data. And there's plenty of research showing when strategy fails, often those assumptions are broken.

Raja Walia 5:21

So yeah, I mean, like, and here's the thing like confidence is rewarded at the top, right? Like you have to be confident to be a leader. Questioning assumptions is going to sound like doubt. So when plans get approved, it's because they feel strong, not because they're resilient. That's you know, it's not, it's not bad intent. Like no leader is saying, I'm really going to piggyback on this and really just, you know, fail very, very hard. Like this is going to fail, but I'm going to run with it. But I mean, that that's just how leadership incentives kind of work, right? And that's where leadership accountability has to come in. And like execution is very easy to critique because it's a one and it's ones and zeros, right? Did we execute correctly? Did the campaign go out on time? Was the messaging correct? Very, very easy to kind of go in and critique it. But assumptions belong to people who approve the plan, which is you as a leader. So if you approve the plan and you're assuming you're gonna, you know, make a bajillion dollars, let's just say, off of this plan and you fall short, well, at the end of the day, like no one read a subject line or clicked a CTA button and was just like, nope, this is it. This is this is the reason I'm not gonna buy your product. And that's what no, it's because the plan that was approved, as a leader, you have to be able to question it. And if you don't question it, then that is failure. That is failure on your part, right? That is leadership failure. Because the assumption at that point is, well, ops failed. We didn't execute correctly. You know, you can only put an ad out and people click on it. You can only send an email, people are gonna engage with it. You can only have your sales teams call so many people and they pick up the phone, they have a conversation. But if what the if what the growth plan doesn't account for is changes in the market, and if something changes, you're still running the same playbook. And that's where I think it's on leadership to really do, really like step in and be confident, like, hey, we need to change, right? We need to pivot, or this strategy, like you have to push back at a certain point. But I think as leaders, we're kind of like you're just kind of looking out for a job. You know what I mean? Like you don't want to push back on the CEO of a company, but either way, either you push back now or down the road, you're gonna be gone either way if that plan doesn't work, right? In Harvard Business Review, it consistently shows up over each thing, everything that they post out in hardware, hardware business review, that strategy failures are driven by flawed assumptions and poor execution. If all of these things and all of these articles and all of this data is pointing to the fact that the assumption is flawed than execution, then at what point is leadership kind of pushing back, right? Well, once again, like either you're gonna get fired if you push back, and they tell you like the worst case scenario is someone's gonna tell you, you know what, like shut up and do it fucking anyway, in a very like PC way. Or you push back, you kind of have your concerns, you have to do it anyway, right? Like, let's just assume in that one that you push back, they say, Too bad, this is our growth plan, this is our growth strategy. You execute on it, but at least you have a leg to stand on and can say, Hey, I said this was not going to work, or it wasn't going to work correctly, we needed to change. This is why. And then at that point, that's when confidence and you know, that's where you get ownership. That's where you become the owner of that next growth plan or that pivot, essentially.

Akande Davis 8:38

Yeah, and I think that's kind of the a key part of this. So the reason that ownership around the risk is important is because when the leadership doesn't own it or they pass it off, right? Or better yet, when leadership doesn't own it, it ends up resulting in different ways. So it becomes marketing pressure, it becomes sales pressure because the strategy isn't the problem from their perspective, it's the execution. But then you have marketing and sales taking and absorbing all of that risk, executing on a plan effectively, they're effectively executing, but on a plan that just was broken from the very beginning. Um, and that's that's where that pushback is important because if you don't sound the alarms, if you're not a squeaky wheel, then ultimately they're gonna say, okay, well, the marketing team, the customer success team, the sales team, they just didn't do their job. There wasn't anything wrong with the strategy. Our execution was just poor.

Raja Walia 9:26

Yeah, and I think, and that's when everyone acts like it's a surprise, right? Like everyone's like, oh my God, execution failed, the market shifted, and this risk was always there. And leadership kind of chose not to name it early out of convenience. Uh, so it shows up later as a blame game. And when we talk about say, and this is this is what prompts people to have sales and marketing alignment sessions, like that's the problem, you know what I mean? Um, that there is some sort of disconnect between what marketing is doing and what sales was doing, and the reality is a leadership problem. Like it's it's the inability for us as leaders to say, hey, you know what? There's something wrong with this. We'll try it, but we might have to change. Or there's something wrong with this, we shouldn't do it. But it's very easy for us to kind of just become compliant and say, we're just being asked to do this, so we're gonna do it. And then, you know, uh by the time it gets done, you're you know, redefining your resume and reaching out to people on LinkedIn and trying to see like what else is out on the market, right? And that and that's the the kind of the sad part about it is like either way, that's going to happen. If if it if it's successful, you get to survive another growth plan or another growth strategy. If it isn't successful, then you just go, you you have to do the same thing anyway, right? So why why not take a chance as a leader and say, let's let's degree disagree with something and let's try to find a better way to do it.

Akande Davis 10:47

Well, yeah, and I think I think that brings up an interesting point as well because there's an inverse relationship there. There's the leaders at the top, um, or excuse me, the the C-suite or your executives, when they when they issue a plan, leaders are going to be less likely to push back. And again, it's been demonstrated time and time again, uh, whether that's Harvard Business Review or other publications, that as the strategy comes down, challenges do not flow in the opposite direction. Senior leaders will rarely question a plan, uh, even when they know that there's a problem and even when they see risk. They'll essentially agree to plans that they don't fully believe in themselves.

Raja Walia 11:24

Yeah, and I'm I think it's that's because it's real. It's a real I think the idea is that as a leader, if you disagree with something, you're gonna look as, you know, as op, right? You're gonna be looked at as opposition. Yeah. And this, and it feels like it's a personal risk, right? Like uh, you know, to all our listeners, Akade and I, I wouldn't say we disagree quite a bit on strategies, right? But we find ways to say it. And disagreement is never a like, I don't think you know, you're attacking me and saying, hey, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my entire life, right? That's what no. It's a it's a different viewpoint and opinion. And, you know, we have a relationship that's built over time, and you might not, but at the same time, you know, at some point you have to disagree. And I think the idea is that it's not a personal attack, and you don't want to slow momentum, you don't want to look bad or not aligned, so we stay quiet and just pray that the plan works, right? And I think there's a level to leadership in the modern age where you have to know when to push back and when certain things just don't really matter, right? Like if you're focusing as a leader on a subject line and think that subject line is what's going to prompt people to open an email in 2026 and that's what you're focusing on, you know, that's probably not like the best strategy.

Akande Davis 12:45

Absolutely. And and that's kind of why it's essential. I mean, when when growth slows and assumptions get broken, those things are never revisited. And if if you're not pushing back or disagreeing at some level, there's always going to be the assumption that the execution was poor or that you should have voiced up when you had the opportunity. I will say though, it for it's worth worth pointing out, we shouldn't just disagree with leadership for the sake of disagreeing. There should be some validity behind it, and that trust has to be built. One thing I talked about uh recently at a at a local conference was that execution is the foundation of trust when it comes to leadership and strategy. So if you're executing and executing well, reliably, consistently, and demonstrating that with yourself and your team, that's when you can build the trust and build that opportunity to disagree at some level. But Roger, maybe we could talk about why when growth slows, the assumptions that initially kind of built this strategy are never then revisited, right? We we don't ever go back to the drawing board and say, hey, maybe the market's not as hot or ready for this as we thought it was going to be, or maybe this is not the direction we should be taking things.

Raja Walia 13:50

Yeah, I mean, I think Harvard research shows that as leader, like leaders challenge assumptions less and less as hierarchy increases. The higher you move up, the less you are going to push back and challenge any assumption. Um, and really like just have an honest debate about it. And I think, and this isn't accidental, right? Like there, there's there all this research that shows it, you know, they we they never revisit a goal, like a growth plan, right? Either it fails or it succeeds. We never adjust it. Maybe it's not that the growth plan was flawed, maybe like to your point, the timing was bad. Uh, maybe that we missed something on why someone brought product, like you know, instead of rewriting the entire story and just shifting, and this is where you see a lot of people just start investing in technology, right? Thinking that technology is gonna solve the problem. Yeah, like you're not looking at marketing conditions, you're not looking at timing, you're not looking at execution. You might have a really, really good growth plan and strategy. Maybe it just wasn't the right time, right? And no one looks at that. No one, everyone just assumes it failed and moved on, and that's it. Like either it's yes or no, black and white, that's it. And I think that's really where, especially in marketing and as marketing leaders, if we don't look at the entire story and we don't attempt to either rewrite it or adjust it or modify it, then as then you are you're failing as a leader and your credibility is just going to go down and down and down. Uh, Wharton research, I think, shows uh that that companies rarely revisit these assumptions, even after performance issues. If even if you blame it on execution, let's say, right? Like you say, hey, we had this growth plan, it executed poorly. Wharton research shows that no one even revisits it, no one understands why execution didn't fail. They just assume that it didn't work and just move on with their life.

Akande Davis 15:39

Yeah, and and it's funny too, because you know, to your point earlier, maybe the execution was flawless, right? And and maybe the timing even was perfect. Like maybe all of these factors were perfect, but the problem was that you were running an ABM strategy with a one-person buying committee organization, right? Maybe, maybe that's the the fundamental issue. But you heard this word ABM, the C-suite likes ABM, the leaders like ABM, everyone's talking about this buzzword. It gets down to the execution team and there's no pushback, and then it flops.

Raja Walia 16:09

So Yeah, and and that's where all your credibility erodes, right? Like when you don't have an answer, I think it's and and I'm I mean, this might be like a controversial opinion, and a lot of C-suite will probably just be like, well, it's because you know you're the CEO of a company and you know you've done this. Like, but I think a lot of this credibility erodes because if you're a strong leader, you don't protect the plan, you interrogate it. You would, you know, you almost become like a light shining in the eyes, like, what happened? Why didn't this email go on time? And that's and that's where you as a leader will get questioned more and more. And you know, real leadership isn't about lowering ambition or saying, well, screw it, like let's open up you know the floodgates and let's see how many people that we can get. Um, and that usually just FYI, like, you know, if you're listening to this, like that usually happens at the tail end when pressure is on, right? You've been running a growth plan or a growth strategy or whatever it is for three months uh or two months, and let's say your quarter is ending and you don't see the results. That's where people usually kind of come up and say, we really need more leads. Like, let's just send it to everybody. Let's, you know, screw it. Like whoever's out there, let's do it. And I think that's not like real lower, real leadership isn't about lowering your ambition. It's about saying, hey, here's what we're assuming, and here's who owns it, and here's what's breaking. That's how you protect your trust and credibility as a leader. And that's how you are considered more uh of a strategic resource than a person that's replaceable, right? And I think that's the big difference is like you wait until the tail end, you know, the ninth hour, the tenth hour, the twelfth hour, whatever the whatever that analogy is, and then you try to change it. And that's not that's not the case, right?

Akande Davis 17:47

Yeah, absolutely. I think the final takeaway from this episode is when we think about owning risk, it's really has to be at the executive level. It's an executive level responsibility. Like ambition is easy. Growth plans obviously can be wonderfully built out. Execution, it might not be easy, but very possible. But accountability is the job. So the organizations that scale the most are ambitious, but that's not all they have. They're not just optimistic, they have a real and honest look. And like you were saying, Raja, they interrogate the strategy before it goes out.

Raja Walia 18:18

Yeah, and then I think one thing to take into account as you know, like my takeaway from an exec perspective was like growth doesn't end careers, like losing your credibility does. And credibility is built on leaders who are willing to own the reality and own the strategy early on and explain why we have to change it, why it won't work, and being able to vocalize it. Worst case scenario in that example, you still have to do it anyway. Right? People will people will say it all the time. Well, you know, the CEO just wants to done that's perfectly fine. Hey, we'll do it this way. You voice your concerns. So it doesn't, you know, you don't um own the assumption until you absolutely have to, and that's when you start pushing back. Your credibility at that point is gone. Like, why didn't you say this earlier? Which is a common theme of things, right? So, like, you know, look at your last growth plan. If you can't clearly see or say see, or even say who owned the assumptions and where the real risks are and how you execute and what you can do to change it. And if you haven't done it, then you know that's probably the your first step. Like, that's probably the first point of focus if you have a growth plan going into 2026.

Akande Davis 19:26

Spot on. And and thank you guys so much for listening today. I hope you were able to pull something valuable out of this episode of Call It RevOps. Be sure in the new year to check out all of our episodes. We're really focusing on C Suite and the leadership decisions made there and what it might look like to be a CEO, CMO, senior vice president, VP in 2026.

Raja Walia 19:45

Yeah, you know me.

Akande Davis 19:45

You know me. Uh, but yeah, thank you guys for watching and be sure to check out our next episode of Call It RevOps. We'll see you next time.