Many organizations think they are progressing well when everyone is busy and initiatives are moving. Fewer clearly understand how much actually makes it all the way through to a result. That difference, between being resource-oriented and flow-oriented, shows up sooner or later in the numbers.
I was sitting in on a monthly leadership team meeting with one of our clients. It was one of those meetings where the overall mood felt surprisingly positive - there was a sense of momentum, the organization was moving at a high pace, and status reports suggested things were progressing well across the board. Carsten, the COO, pulled up a slide and walked the group through eighteen active initiatives, most of them marked green or yellow and considered on track. Henrik, the CEO, was satisfied. “It feels like we really have momentum right now,” he said. No one disagreed.
Then Thomas, the CFO, took over.
He started walking through the numbers for the month. The forecast had been adjusted downward, several expected revenues were not going to land on time, and as he broke it down further the picture became clearer and more uncomfortable. Out of the eighteen initiatives, only five had actually delivered anything that impacted results.
The room went quiet.
Henrik looked up with a different expression. “Wait,” he said. “How can we be more or less on track and still miss our targets?”
No one had a clear answer, because everyone could see the high activity level across the organization. Everyone knew people were working hard. Everything seemed to be moving forward, yet very little had actually been accomplished.
What Had Really Happened
When we started digging into what was behind the numbers, a different story emerged. The organization had started more initiatives than it had the capacity to finish, which meant everything had been set in motion but very little had received enough focus to reach completion. Teams were switching between tasks, priorities were shifting, and decisions were being delayed. Nothing was standing still, but almost nothing was getting finished.
At the same time, their reporting was built around how much work was in progress and how far different initiatives had advanced in relation to the agreed time plan, not around what had actually been delivered. Which meant everything looked like progress, even when none of the initiatives had been realized. When we eventually asked the simple question - “What is actually done?” - the picture changed completely.
The organization was busy and people were committed. But because everything had been started, it also created the illusion that everything was moving forward.
Why Flow Tells a Different Story
This is what flow reveals that activity metrics cannot. It shows what actually received capacity, what actually moved all the way through the system, and therefore what the organization was truly focusing on. And in this case, it also revealed something deeper: their picture of reality had been wrong. They had been managing based on activity and perceived progress, not on completed outcomes and created value. As long as many initiatives were moving forward a little at the same time, it felt like they were on track.
What this leadership team discovered is something I see in many organizations. There is a deeply rooted belief that high activity equals progress - that as long as many initiatives are running, people are busy and status reports show movement, things are going well. But activity says very little about focus. When too many things are started at the same time, focus gets fragmented, prioritization becomes harder, decision-making slows down, and execution stretches out. The organization feels fast but in reality, everything moves slowly.
Why Flow Efficiency Matters
If a lot is started but very little gets finished, your focus is weaker than your strategy suggests. And when focus is weak, your perception of reality becomes misleading - it looks like progress is being made, but what you are actually measuring is movement instead of outcomes.
This is where focus on flow efficiency can help resolve the situation and change your ways of working to create real value. The question is not primarily about working faster. To achieve higher flow efficiency when working with company-wide initiatives, you must understand how much of what you start actually gets finished, because an initiative still in progress has not yet delivered anything.
That is why flow acts as a truth detector in organizations. It does not care how many initiatives you have started or how much work is in progress. It only cares about what actually makes it all the way through the system to create the expected value.
For many leadership teams, this is an uncomfortable insight. It means acknowledging that priorities are not as clear as they believed, and that plans are not as realistic as they assumed. But it is also where things can start to change, because the solution is already within reach:
- Reduce the amount of work in progress and flow starts to accelerate.
- Let fewer things compete for attention and decisions become faster and execution clearer.
- Finish more of what you start and your view of reality begins to align with your plans.
Is Your Organization Caught in the Same Pattern?
If you recognize the situation Henrik and his team found themselves in - busy, committed, and still missing targets, it is worth asking one simple question before your next leadership review: “How many of our current initiatives will actually be delivered this quarter?”
If you cannot answer that with confidence, it is worth finding out why. Book a session with Fredrik - he has helped leadership teams in various companies get an honest picture of where their focus really is, and what it costs them not to act on it.
