Visionary leaders often need to slow down to build well.

I hired a coach to say “no” to my ideas.

I joke that I pay him to kill my best ideas. But it’s largely true. We have an agreement: when I’m excited about something, I tell him about it before deciding.
He says, “No.” And I move on with my day.

It’s one of the most profitable decisions I’ve made in my business.

Not because I have bad ideas. Most are pretty good. (Once in a while, there are a few stinkers.)

But when things slow down or feel stale, my instinct is to heat everything up. Turn all the burners on. Get every pot and pan going on high heat. (That’s also how I cook. My wife hates it. She’s like my coach—just walks in and turns down the burners.)

But it was burning me out. And I didn’t even realize it. I was doing the entrepreneurial thing: casting vision, starting stuff, making it happen.

But it wasn’t helping me build. I was just setting energy and resources on fire.

1. Cooking Too Much At Once

Visionary leaders love to start things. But starting is easy. Starting feels good. Starting gives you energy.

Finishing is harder. Finishing demands patience, follow-through, and even restraint.

It’s hard to cook a good meal if everything is on high heat. All the time. It’s hard to finish anything well. At best, everything’s undercooked. At worst, you’re scraping char off the bottom of the pan and trying to air the smoke out of the house.

The fix: Patience and restraint. Find what works and stick with it. If it’s producing results, it doesn’t need to feel exciting. For visionary leaders, finishing well beats starting more.

2. Falling in Love with the Picture—And Ignoring the Recipe

I often look at instructions last. After I can’t figure it out anymore. Sometimes I do that with recipes as well.

At least I start that way. But I keep finding that I have to go back to the steps. The plans. The process.

Many leaders approach vision like that too—confusing enthusiasm with progress.

I’ve coached enough leaders to know I’m not the only one. We fall in love with what we see. But we don’t always map how to get there.

As a result—something gets missed.

In fact, the biggest visions I’m told usually come from leaders of the smallest organizations. Actually, I’ve noticed (and I verified this with research on entrepreneurship), there is often an inverse relationship between vision and the size of an organization. Huge visions for sub-$1M companies. Comparatively tiny ones for $1B companies.

The small ones are unencumbered by perspective. Larger ones learn that success sometimes feels like more risk and complexity. I’m more likely to encourage my larger clients to dream big than my smaller ones.

Another example: startups. Personally, I usually avoid working with startups led by inexperienced business leaders. Their chances of success are actually lower than average. But I love working with startups led by a leader who has successfully exited a company—or who is expanding on their business. They appreciate the need to realistically look at what it’ll take to build.

The fix: If you can’t figure out how to get from here to there, dial the vision back to the nearest stepping stone that you can plan to. You’re still moving in the right direction. And you’re more likely to succeed. Once you do, you can dial your vision back up a bit and take another step. This is where visionary leaders often need restraint.

3. Assuming Everyone Else Sees It and Is On Board

You get excited. You see it. You feel it. You assume everyone else does too.

They probably don’t.

There’s a high chance you haven’t communicated it clearly. You haven’t translated it into language they understand. You haven’t invited them into building it with you.

So, they feel your energy. If they trust you, they might be excited about that. Or nervous. Depends on your track record.

So you end up trying to drag people toward something they don’t believe in. Or, they just sit back and watch you try to do it all.

The fix: Let your team shape the vision. Include them in planning toward it. Let them get their fingerprints on it. That’s how they start to own it—and carry it. That reality surprises many visionary leaders.

4. Confusing Identity with Ownership

Sometimes we say people “don’t get it” when what we mean is—we don’t want to share it.

I’ve seen visionary leaders hold the vision so tightly, no one else could get near it. It becomes personal. It becomes sacred. It becomes about them.

They want to be the chosen one. The genius who made it happen. The only one who understood.

That’s ego—not leadership.

The fix: Let go. Others may build it better than you. That shouldn’t feel threatening. That should feel like relief. If it doesn’t, ask yourself why. For visionary leaders, mapping the steps matters more than big talk.

5. Driving Everyone (Including Yourself) to Exhaustion

If you’re charismatic and competent, you can drag a team behind you for a while. But eventually, the people you pull will burn out. And so will you.

Then the vision dies with you.

The fix: Turn down the heat. Not every burner needs to be on high. Build people who can run the kitchen with you—without having to be rescued. The smartest visionary leaders invite their teams into the process.

Practical next steps for visionary leaders

So—You’re the Visionary. Now What?

Here’s what I’ve learned to do. What I coach others to do. What stops the burnout and turns vision into something that actually gets built:

Connect the Dots: Reverse-engineer the vision. If you can’t map the steps, don’t assume you’ll figure them out along the way. Stress-test it with someone who’s done it. Visionary leaders can confuse ego with ownership.

Practice Humility: You can’t see all your blind spots. Even if you think you can, you can’t. Most of the biggest mistakes visionary leaders make are ego-driven. Humility protects you. And your team. Sustainable pace protects visionary leaders and their teams.

Find Competent Support: Olympic athletes may be the best in the world—but they don’t train alone. Neither should you. Work with coaches. Successful peers. Advisors. People who aren’t afraid to say, “No.” Vision turns into results when visionary leaders commit to follow-through.

Open the Vision: Bring your team into the process early. It’ll take longer. It may get messier. But it’s far more likely to be built and sustained.

Conclusion

Most companies under $10M are drowning in vision and starving for execution. The ones that grow learn to tie vision to specific steps, accountability, and process. They follow through. And growth is a result.

Once they do that, they actually need more vision—because now they can carry it.

If you find yourself standing in a smoke-filled kitchen, everything on fire, no meal in sight—slow down.
Focus on fewer things. For longer.

Don’t keep lighting fires.

I’m not against vision. But you have to learn to be as good at completing vision as you are at starting it.

Otherwise, what’s the point?

Take good care,
Christian