One of the hardest parts of leading a scale-up isn’t strategy.
It’s switching mental gears 20 times a day.
As a founder or leader, you’re expected to care about:
- This quarter’s revenue
- Next quarter’s pipeline
- The product/tech shifts 6–12 months away
All at the same time.
And all with the same level of intensity.
That’s not a strategy problem.
That’s a human problem.
Why Leaders Get Stuck
Most people have a comfortable mode:
- Some love the adrenaline of closing deals
- Some prefer shaping ideas and opportunities
- Others thrive in long-term thinking and design
But when you scale, getting stuck in your favourite mode kills momentum.
It shows up as:
-> End-of-quarter panics
-> Pipeline droughts
-> Roadmaps that never move
-> Teams confused about “what really matters”
-> Leaders feeling constantly reactive
The business grows. But the leadership range doesn’t.
The Real Challenge: Operating in Multi-Modes— intentionally
To scale sustainably, leaders need to operate across three horizons at the same time:
🔹 Horizon 1 (0–6 months): Deliver
Revenue, customer issues, cashflow, this quarter’s commitments.
🔹 Horizon 2 (6–12 months): Shape
Pipeline, new use cases, market positioning, capability building.
🔹 Horizon 3 (12–24 months): Transform
Product evolution, tech investments, strategic bets, organisational shifts.
You spend Monday firefighting a key account, Tuesday in budget reviews, and by Wednesday evening you realise you’ve done nothing to move next quarter’s pipeline forward. Again.
Every leader knows these horizons matter. Not because you don’t care – but because Horizon 1 always shouts the loudest.
What’s often harder is the emotional and cognitive flexibility to move between them without losing momentum.
The Human Side: Why Multimode Leadership Feels Hard
Switching modes requires different mental muscles:
- Execution mode demands urgency, clarity, and decisiveness.
- Opportunity mode requires curiosity, pattern-spotting, and patience.
- Transformation mode asks for imagination, resilience, and tolerance for ambiguity.
Leaders aren’t robots.
You can’t simply “be strategic now” or “be operational now” on command.
Which is why the real skill is learning to expand your range, not force yourself into one persona.
As a founder or senior leader, your team takes their cue from you.
If you live entirely in the present, they’ll never look ahead.
If you live entirely in the future, they’ll feel lost today.
How Leaders Build the Skill of Multi-Mode Thinking
Here are practices I see working in scale-ups that grow predictably rather than sporadically:
- Schedule your horizons
Block regular time for each horizon—don’t rely on willpower.
Otherwise Horizon 1 will always dominate.
- Make your mode visible
Tell your team: “This conversation is Horizon 2. We’re exploring, not deciding.”
It reduces pressure and lifts the quality of the discussion.
- Assign ownership across horizons
You can’t carry all three alone.
Even assigning lightweight stewardship creates organisational balance.
- Reward behaviour, not just outcomes
If people are only rewarded for closing deals, no one will invest in next quarter’s pipeline or next year’s product.
- Embrace the emotional shift
Switching from firefighting to future-planning can feel jarring.
That discomfort is not a signal of failure—it’s a sign of growth.
Final Thought: Scaling Requires Range, Not Just Skill
The organisations that scale successfully are not the ones with the best strategy slides.
They are the ones with leaders who can:
✔ Deliver today
✔ Shape tomorrow
✔ Build the future
…while staying human, balanced, and aware of their natural biases.
This isn’t about being a superhero.
It’s about building habits, rhythms, and self-awareness so you don’t get stuck in the mode that feels most comfortable.
In this series, I’ll explore more leadership shifts needed for scale-ups to grow sustainably. If this resonates, I’d love to hear: Which horizon do you naturally gravitate towards—and which one drains you the most? 👇