Getting Lost in the Strategy When Managing Operational Delivery: Lessons from Australian Scale-Ups

Scaling a business is an exciting yet complex journey, filled with the promise of rapid growth, expanded reach, and the buzz of new markets. For companies in the 'scale-up' phase, this period represents a critical pivot where the strategy shifts from foundational growth to sustaining and accelerating momentum. However, amid this excitement, it's easy to get caught in the allure of high-level strategy, often losing sight of the operational delivery that is essential to realising the vision.

For scale-ups, balancing strategy and execution is like walking a tightrope. Missteps on either side can lead to missed opportunities or, worse, derail the entire operation. So, how can Australian companies avoid getting lost in the strategy while still ensuring operational delivery remains at the forefront?

The Scale-Up Dilemma: Strategy vs. Delivery

Scaling a business isn't just about doing more of what you’re already doing; it’s about doing it better, faster, and often in uncharted territory. Australian companies in this phase tend to focus heavily on strategy: market penetration, competitor analysis, future product lines, and global expansion. These are all essential aspects, but they can create a gap between what needs to happen day-to-day and where the business aims to be in the next three years.

Operational delivery, on the other hand, is the engine room of a scale-up. It’s about ensuring that the service, product, or platform not only meets customer expectations but exceeds them consistently. Without flawless execution, even the best strategies will fail. And therein lies the challenge for many companies—they get lost in the grand plan and forget that strong, efficient delivery is what powers the whole machine.

Why Strategy Overload Happens

Several factors can lead a scale-up company to lose focus on operational delivery:

1. Overconfidence in Vision: In the rush to scale, founders and leadership teams often become overly fixated on long-term strategy. They envision the company five years down the track but fail to realise that if the current operations aren’t humming, they may not survive that long.
2. Limited Resources Spread Too Thin: Scale-ups typically work with constrained resources. Focusing too much on strategy can spread key resources, such as leadership time and talent, too thin, leaving operational teams under-supported.
3. Data Overload: With growth comes data, and lots of it. While strategic decisions need to be data-driven, drowning in numbers and forecasts can distract from immediate operational needs, especially if the data points are incongruent or misinterpreted.
4. Misaligned Priorities: As companies scale, they add more layers of management and different business functions, each with its own priorities and often without policies in place to manage the balance. If strategic goals don’t align with the operational delivery teams, friction arises, leading to missed KPIs and, ultimately, customer dissatisfaction.

Lessons from Australian Scale-Ups

Australia’s startup and scale-up ecosystem is thriving, with companies from tech, fintech, and consumer products sectors making waves both domestically and internationally. However, there are clear lessons to be learned from those who have stumbled by prioritising strategy at the cost of delivery.

1. The Atlassian Effect: Marrying Strategy with Delivery

Atlassian, one of Australia’s most successful tech scale-ups, made it clear from the start that operational excellence would be a priority. Even as the company expanded globally and invested heavily in new products, they ensured that each phase of their strategy had robust operational support behind it. The lesson here is simple: operational delivery isn’t just a department’s responsibility; it’s ingrained in the company culture.

For Australian scale-ups, adopting this kind of “operational ownership” across the business ensures that high-level strategies don’t drift too far from the ground realities of what’s happening in customer service, product management, or development teams.

2. Afterpay : Execution Wins Over Grand Plans

Afterpay, another Australian unicorn, focused initially on making buy-now-pay-later transactions simple for retailers and customers. Their strategy was clear: scale quickly and dominate the market. However, their ability to execute operationally—creating seamless integrations for merchants and providing reliable customer service—was what truly fuelled their expansion.

In the Afterpay story, the strategy never outpaced the capability to deliver. Their success demonstrates that even in fast-moving markets, execution is everything. Strategy without delivery is just a pipe dream.

3. Keeping Teams Focused: Don’t Overcomplicate It

One of the pitfalls of getting lost in strategy is the tendency to overcomplicate goals and processes. Australian scale-ups can learn from companies like Canva , which, despite its rapid growth, kept the operational side of things straightforward. Canva's leadership ensured that each new strategic move had clear, simple execution steps, keeping teams focused on delivery without being overwhelmed by complexity.

This focus on simplicity is crucial for scale-ups. As businesses grow, maintaining clarity in operational processes can be the difference between chaos and smooth sailing.

Staying Grounded: Strategies for Avoiding the Trap

So, how can scale-ups stay grounded in operational reality while also pursuing ambitious strategic growth?

1. Adopt a Dual Leadership Mindset: Ensure that senior leadership remains equally invested in operational delivery and strategic planning. Having a Chief Operating Officer or senior operations executive with a seat at the table during strategic discussions can keep the business grounded in what’s realistic.
2. Regular Alignment Check-Ins: Align operational goals with strategic objectives through regular check-ins. These should involve cross-departmental teams to ensure that the left hand knows what the right hand is doing.
3. Customer-Centric Operations: Never lose sight of the customer. Operational delivery should always be tied back to customer satisfaction and retention, with strategic moves tested against their impact on the user experience.
4. Flexible but Focused: Australian scale-ups must be flexible enough to adapt strategies as they grow, but focused enough to ensure delivery is never compromised.

So, while it’s easy for Australian scale-ups to get caught up in the excitement of strategy, it’s operational delivery that will ultimately determine their success. Balancing both is essential for turning ambition into sustained growth.