I’m at the gym most mornings. Long stretches on an Echo bike or rowing machine give my mind just enough freedom to wander. And more often than not, it wanders backward.
I think about past companies where I led our go-to-market and, on paper, I felt like we had things dialed in. The team was strong. Campaigns were running. Sales was active. Everyone was busy.
And yet… lead flow wasn’t trending the right way. Growth felt stubborn. Flat. Uncooperative.
I remember board conversations where I felt embarrassed. Not because we weren’t working hard, but because I couldn’t point to the thing that was actually moving the needle. So I’d leave those meetings with a quiet vow:
Before the next board meeting, I’m going to figure this out.
What are we missing?
What are we not doing?
Or worse — what are we doing that’s actively working against us?
Here’s the funny part…I’m still wrestling with a version of this problem today, just in a different arena.
Weight Loss Struggles
Despite consistent attendance at my CrossFit gym four to five days a week, I’ve struggled to lose the same 20 pounds for… let’s just call it “several years.”
At this point, I’m not “trying to lose weight.” I’m apparently in a long-term bulking phase I never signed up for.
And if I were honest with myself, I already know the issue.
It’s not a lack of effort.
It’s not discipline.
It’s not that I need more workouts.
It’s that I’ve never actually stopped to diagnose what’s really holding me back.
If I went to a doctor or a personal trainer, they wouldn’t tell me to just “work harder.” They’d ask better questions:
- How are you training?
- What does your nutrition actually look like?
- What are you optimizing for — strength, endurance, fat loss?
- What signals are you ignoring?
- What blind spots might be undermining everything else?
Because when progress stalls — in fitness or in business — the most dangerous move isn’t doing nothing.
It’s fixing the wrong problem with total confidence.
That’s exactly what happens inside most B2B growth engines.
Teams feel the pressure. They take action. They hire, rebrand, launch campaigns, switch tools, tweak messaging.
And yet growth stays stuck.
Not because they’re underperforming, but because real constraints live in their blind spots, not their dashboards.
The Real Growth Killer: Assumption-based Action
When growth stalls, most leadership teams don’t pause to diagnose. They assume.
Our pipeline is pretty thin for next quarter… Must be a lead problem.
Our deals are dragging… Looks like we have a sales execution issue.
Our conversion rate is down… Guess we need to tweak our headlines.
Our CAC is creeping up… Well, we did add a new channel, new tool, new hire…
These assumptions are all reasonable. They’re familiar. They’re quick conclusions that we can act on fast.
They’re also often wrong.
What actually happens inside most B2B organizations is this: leaders respond to symptoms, not structural issues. Tactical pain points get treated in isolation while the underlying, foundational mechanics (ICP clarity, positioning, GTM motion, handoffs, incentives) all remain untouched.
From the CEO seat, it looks like action.
From the CMO seat, it feels like whiplash.
From the CRO seat, it feels like pressure without leverage.
From the structural perspective, nothing fundamental changes.
You don’t have a performance problem.
You have a visibility problem.
And when you can’t clearly see how inputs connect to outcomes, you’re simply flying blind.
The Illusion of Progress (a.k.a. Activity Theater)
Here’s where things get dangerous.
Most B2B organizations are not lazy. They are busy.
Slack messages flying.
Dashboards updating.
Campaigns launching.
Meetings stacked.
OKRs tracked.
Tools humming.
There’s motion everywhere.
But motion is not momentum.
Speed without clarity doesn’t accelerate growth. It just burns fuel faster. And this is how teams fall into what we call activity theater: lots of visible work, lots of effort, very little compounding impact.
From the CEO’s vantage point, it can feel like:
“Everyone’s working hard… Why isn’t this showing up in revenue?”
From the CMO’s vantage point, it feels like:
“We’re executing nonstop, but we’re not solving the right problem.”
From the CRO’s vantage point, it feels like:
“I’m being asked to hit a number with inputs I don’t fully trust — and a system I didn’t design.”
All three of these are valid and can be true at the same time.
The illusion of progress is seductive because it quiets anxiety temporarily. Doing something feels better than slowing down. But without a shared understanding of the actual bottleneck, all that activity just creates noise — not lift.
How to Tell If You’re Fixing the Wrong Problems
If you’re wondering whether this applies to you, here are a few uncomfortable but telling signals:
- You’ve changed your messaging multiple times in the past year, but performance hasn’t meaningfully improved.
- Sales and marketing privately blame each other for missed targets, even if they’re polite about it in meetings.
- Your pipeline “looks fine,” yet deals consistently stall, shrink, or fail to close.
- Ask three leaders to define your ideal customer, and you get three different answers.
- Your growth plan is a long list of initiatives, not a clear strategy with tradeoffs.
- Your team is executing relentlessly, but struggling to explain why certain efforts should work.
None of these mean your team is incompetent. They mean the structure hasn’t been properly diagnosed.
And without diagnosis, even good execution becomes guesswork.
What Clarity Actually Looks Like
When companies get this right, it doesn’t feel like magic.
It feels… calmer.
- There’s alignment on who you’re really for (and who you’re not).
- Positioning is clear enough that sales doesn’t improvise every pitch.
- Marketing knows which levers matter now versus later.
- Sales knows which deals to prioritize.
- Metrics connect effort to outcomes in a way leadership can trust.
Most importantly, executives, marketing, and sales are operating from the same mental model of how growth is supposed to happen.
That’s the difference between doing more and doing the right things.
This is why we think of a proper growth diagnostic like an MRI — not a thermometer. It doesn’t just tell you something’s “off.” It shows you where, why, and what’s connected to what.
Only then does execution actually compound.
A Familiar Story (and a Common Surprise)
One client came to us convinced they had a lead quality problem.
Marketing was delivering volume. Sales was frustrated. Conversion rates were under pressure. The instinctive response was predictable: change messaging, tighten targeting, increase spend in “higher-intent” channels.
But when we stepped back and diagnosed the full system, the picture changed.
The real issue wasn’t lead quality. It was ICP drift.
Over time, the company had expanded into adjacent segments without updating positioning, sales enablement, or qualification criteria. Marketing was attracting multiple buyer types. Sales was treating them all the same. Nobody was wrong — but the structure was misaligned.
Once the ICP was clarified and the GTM motion realigned, conversion improved without increasing lead volume. Sales cycles shortened. Pipeline quality improved.
The breakthrough didn’t come from trying harder. It came from seeing clearly.
Why This Gets Missed (Even by Smart Partners)
To be fair, some agencies and consultants do start with an assessment.
They’ll run an SEO audit.
Or a conversion-rate audit.
Or a messaging review.
Or a funnel teardown.
Those can be useful. Sometimes very useful.
But they’re also narrow by design.
What usually gets assessed is the slice of the business the partner is hired to work on, not the full growth engine. The result is insight without context, optimization without alignment, and recommendations that improve a part while leaving the whole untouched.
And in many cases, partners don’t even get that far, because clients don’t ask for diagnosis in the first place.
They ask for:
- More leads
- Better messaging
- A new website
- Faster pipeline
So partners deliver what’s requested. Execution begins immediately. Symptoms get treated. The structure stays intact.
This isn’t malicious — it’s structural.
True diagnostics require zooming out far beyond a single channel or function. They take time, cross-functional context, and a willingness to surface uncomfortable truths — about ICP fit, positioning clarity, handoffs, incentives, and decision-making.
And those truths don’t always point to a shiny tactic.
Sometimes they say: stop.
Sometimes they say: realign.
Sometimes they say: simplify.
That kind of work doesn’t fit neatly into a scoped engagement or a predefined service line. And it’s not what most vendors are incented (or equipped) to sell.
Start With Truth (and Find the Real Catalyst)
Here’s the part I didn’t fully appreciate for a long time, in business or in fitness.
When I’ve actually seen the scale move in the right direction over the years, it wasn’t because I suddenly found a better workout program. Or because I trained harder. Or because I stacked on more activity.
It was almost always correlated to one thing.
Alcohol.
When I reduced it meaningfully — not eliminated, just cut back to weekends only — my metabolism responded. The machine started working the way it was supposed to. The same workouts suddenly produced different results.
The problem wasn’t effort.
The problem wasn’t discipline.
The problem wasn’t activity volume.
The problem was a single, overlooked constraint that was quietly neutralizing everything else.
That’s how growth breaks inside B2B companies.
It’s rarely that teams aren’t working hard enough. It’s that one foundational issue — unclear ICPs, muddled positioning, misaligned handoffs, confused success metrics — is acting like alcohol in the system. You can pile on campaigns, tools, and hires, but until that constraint is identified, the engine won’t respond.
And just like weight loss, guessing rarely works.
You don’t fix metabolism by trying random diets every month.
You don’t fix growth by launching random initiatives every quarter.
You fix it by telling the truth about what’s actually holding the system back.
Clarity Before Execution
Before you ask your team to run faster, spend more, or try harder — make sure you’ve identified the real catalyst that unlocks momentum.
That’s what our Fathom360 Diagnostic is designed to do. Not to prescribe tactics, but to surface the constraints that are silently throttling growth — so when you do execute, the machine actually responds.
Because growth doesn’t stall from lack of effort.
It stalls when leaders fix everything except the thing that matters most.
If you’re wanting your growth to accelerate, it may be time to stop guessing…and start diagnosing.
Book a call with us today to get a conversation started. Or, run a quick test on your current engine for some immediate insights.
Up Next
Next week, we’ll break down what a real GTM diagnostic costs, what it should include, and how to know if it’s worth the investment.
