Over the past year, I kept noticing the same pattern across different teams and companies: execution wasn’t breaking down because people weren’t working hard or trying to do the right thing. It was breaking down because something subtle. Something structural… was off. People were moving fast, but the organisation was pulling in different directions. We were scaling ambition, but also scaling chaos.

That’s what led me to write the F.R.I.C.T.I.O.N. Framework, It’s my attempt to name the silent killers of execution and offer a practical way to diagnose and fix them, especially as we grow.

It starts with Fog: when teams can’t repeat the strategy in the same words, the cracks show up everywhere. Priorities drift, debates repeat, and we realise too late that we weren’t aligned after all. The fix? One page. Three choices we’re making, and three we’re refusing. It forces sharpness, and exposes assumptions early.

Then there’s Roles without rights. You’ve probably felt this one. Decisions ping-pong because nobody truly owns them. Shared ownership becomes shared avoidance. So instead of vague alignment, we define one owner, one approver, one deadline, and one escalation path. It simplifies execution, and stops senior people from becoming tie-breakers by default.

Incentives misfire when what we praise, pay, or promote doesn’t match what we say matters. I’ve seen teams hit local goals while the broader business suffers. One practical move: remove a metric that’s driving the wrong behaviour, and just watch how fast the system self-corrects. Incentives silently shape the culture more than most strategies ever will.

Then there’s the trap of Constraints ignored. Everything can’t be top priority. Time, cash, and attention are real limits. When we pretend they aren’t, delivery slips and hiring becomes a band-aid. One shift I’ve found powerful is publishing the real constraint (whether it’s time, risk, or capacity) and forcing plans to show what stops. Tradeoffs clarify everything.

Translation failure shows up when the strategy doesn’t show up in weekly decisions. OKRs feel disconnected from reality. Teams ship output, but outcomes don’t move. To fix that, I recommend boiling strategy down into five operating or decision rules, and embedding those directly into meetings. Strategy should shape the agenda, not sit on a slide.

Toward the end of the framework are some deeper, cultural issues. Information distortion happens when the truth softens as it moves up. “Green” dashboards hide red realities, and bad news arrives too late to act on. Fixing this means creating a channel where only “what must be true for this plan to work” gets discussed, and rewarding early, not late, bad news.

Ownership gaps explain why some projects stay busy without driving results. Meetings multiply to fill the vacuum. Post-mortems point to “the process” instead of the missing accountability. The repair is clear: every initiative gets one accountable owner for a measurable outcome. If that feels unfair, it’s a signal that the scope needs adjusting.

And finally: Noise addiction. When leaders are reacting to Slack instead of strategy, and deep work loses to constant context-switching, execution frays. Quiet time isn’t a luxury, it’s infrastructure. Building a “quiet operating rhythm” with fewer standing meetings, real thinking time, and clear decision windows makes better decisions inevitable.

If any of these friction points resonate, that’s the point. They’re not bugs, they’re patterns. And once you can name them, you can change them.

I’d love to hear where you see friction showing up most clearly. Which of these have we unknowingly tolerated? What’s the small move we could make this quarter to reduce drag?

Let’s pick one, fix it, and move faster with less chaos. Also take a look at the LinkedIn version as it has some simple steps you can apply.