Written by: George Staikos, Boundless Business Consulting

For many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), building a great strategy feels like winning half the battle. You’ve got the slide decks, the market research, and the high-level goals. But months later… little has changed.

This is the strategy-execution gap – the silent killer of growth-stage businesses. And for Canadian SMEs navigating a fiercely competitive and uncertain 2025 landscape, it’s no longer enough to “have a plan.” You need to execute it with precision, urgency, and discipline.

Strategy Is Not the Problem – Execution Is

A Harvard Business Review study found that 67% of well-formulated strategies fail due to poor execution. For many SMEs, the symptoms are all too familiar:

• The business plan is strong, but no one owns the outcomes.
• Marketing initiatives start with energy but fizzle due to a lack of follow-through.
• Sales targets are clear, but there’s no structured pipeline or accountability system.

Ram Charan and Larry Bossidy, in their best-selling book Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, wrote:
“Execution is the missing link between aspirations and results. It’s the main reason companies fall short of their promises.”

What Execution Looks Like for SMEs

Execution is not about perfection – it’s about translating strategy into repeatable action. And for growth-stage SMEs, this often starts with:

• Defining ownership – Who is responsible for which outcomes?
• Setting measurable KPIs – How do we know we’re succeeding?
• Embedding processes – What recurring check-ins or meetings (weekly, monthly, quarterly) help ensure progress stays on track?
• Aligning people – Is everyone on the team clear on the priorities, and do they have what they need?

It’s the difference between having a revenue goal and mapping the sales funnel, assigning prospecting targets, creating lead scoring criteria, and reviewing conversion rates weekly.

Why SMEs Struggle with Execution

Most founders and senior leaders are visionaries. They’re natural starters, not always natural finishers. They thrive in ideation, but often underestimate the operational discipline needed to turn ideas into repeatable growth.

Common roadblocks include:

• Wearing too many hats – No one’s fully focused on sales, marketing, or operations.
• Lack of systems – Without clear workflows or standard processes, momentum dies quickly.
• No feedback loop – If results aren’t measured, teams don’t know what’s working or where to course-correct.
• Execution can feel “unsexy” compared to strategy, but it’s where businesses separate from the pack.

Bridging the Gap: Best Practices That Work

Here’s how Boundless Business Consulting helps SMEs close the gap:

• Build Execution Infrastructure – We help define sales stages, marketing and operational processes, and accountability systems.
• Establish Focus – We align the team around 3–5 key initiatives per quarter using proven frameworks, such as Objectives and Key Results (OKRs).
• Coach for Results – We work alongside founders and senior leaders to shift from reactive to proactive execution.

As Peter Drucker once said, “Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work.”

Final Thought: Strategy Is What You Say – Execution Is What You Do

In 2025, the winners won’t be the SMEs with the slickest strategy decks. They’ll be the ones who put their strategy to work, day in and day out, with relentless clarity and follow-through.

If you’ve built a solid plan but aren’t seeing results, it’s time to invest in execution.

Click to discover how RWI Synthetics achieved real results when they put their plan into action.