The Pond Hockey Problem: Why Your Team Might Be Your Biggest Growth Blocker

In Cana­da, we have pond hock­ey. No cuts, no try­outs. You show up, you play. The pond is demo­c­ra­t­ic and for­giv­ing and — for a game on a Sat­ur­day morn­ing — perfect.

Most lead­er­ship teams start exact­ly like that. No audi­tions. The ear­ly believ­ers, the loy­al builders, the peo­ple who were there when it was just you and a white­board and a dream. They helped you build the foun­da­tion. They earned their place at the table.

But your busi­ness isn’t the same busi­ness it was. It’s big­ger, faster, and more com­plex. The deci­sions are hard­er. The stakes are high­er. The skills required to lead at this lev­el are gen­uine­ly dif­fer­ent from the ones that got you here.

And that cre­ates the most uncom­fort­able con­ver­sa­tion in any CEO’s life: the team that built this might not be the team that scales it.

The Hid­den Cost of Loyalty

I’ve worked with hun­dreds of CEOs over thir­ty years. The most com­mon growth con­straint I find isn’t strat­e­gy, mar­ket tim­ing, or cap­i­tal. It’s that the lead­er­ship team has qui­et­ly plateaued, and the CEO knows it but can’t bring them­selves to act.

They’ll call it loy­al­ty. And it is loy­al­ty — gen­uine, earned loy­al­ty. But it’s also dis­com­fort. And when you pro­tect a rela­tion­ship at the expense of a stan­dard, you erode the orga­ni­za­tion. Your A‑players notice. They’re watch­ing who gets held account­able and who does­n’t. And some of them qui­et­ly start look­ing elsewhere.

First Who, Then What

Jim Collins’ most durable insight isn’t about strat­e­gy or hedge­hogs or fly­wheels. It’s three words: first who, then what. Get the right peo­ple in the right seats before you finalise the strat­e­gy, before you launch the next initiative.

Amish Shah at Kem Krest under­stood this at the moment his busi­ness most need­ed it. After two decades of con­tin­u­ous growth, the com­pa­ny hit a wall — mar­gins com­press­ing, inven­to­ry bal­loon­ing. The con­straint was peo­ple, and Amish knew it. Over 18 months, he rebuilt his exec­u­tive team. New HR lead­er­ship. A new CFO. A new COO. The result: record growth. High­est prof­itabil­i­ty in com­pa­ny his­to­ry. And Amish’s own ener­gy came back because he was final­ly lead­ing for­ward instead of man­ag­ing friction.

Only You Can Set the Standard

There are plen­ty of capa­ble peo­ple in your build­ing. But only one per­son is respon­si­ble for the stan­dard. That’s you. If you won’t raise the bar, no one will. Growth is an act of defi­ance against grav­i­ty. Left alone, orga­ni­za­tions drift toward com­fort. Stan­dards erode an inch at a time. Hard con­ver­sa­tions get resched­uled. The CEO is the one who defies that gravity.

Chal­lenge:

Iden­ti­fy the one per­son on your lead­er­ship team whose role you’d recruit dif­fer­ent­ly today know­ing what you now know about where the busi­ness is going. Then ask: what fair, hon­est con­ver­sa­tion does this per­son deserve? And what is it cost­ing the busi­ness and cost­ing them that you haven’t had it yet?

Addi­tion­al Resources:

Arti­cles

• If Not You, Who? The Own­er of Com­pa­ny Courage 
• Lead­ing Side by Side: The Pow­er of Trust and Ten­sion 
• Stop Man­ag­ing by Inter­ven­tion. Start Man­ag­ing by Design 
• Sev­en Years On: Make Your­self Use­less 

Pod­cast 

• Ep 130: Jim Collins’ Lev­el 5 Leaders 

Case Study 

• Kem Krest: A Case Study of Resilience and Rebuild­ing 

Book: The 4 Forces of Growth 

• 4 minute Overview
• 45 Minute Webinar
• Buy on Amazon

Book: Scal­ing Up

• 45 Minute Webinar
• Arti­cle: 10 Years After Scal­ing Up: What I’ve Learned About Growth

Book: Your Oxy­gen Mast First

• Assess your­self
• Resilience Webi­nar