The conference room was silent. Wall of green metrics—OKRs achieved, EOS rocks completed, customer satisfaction soaring.
“How,” the CEO asked his CFO, “are we 45 days from insolvency?”
I was in that room. The CFO didn’t have an answer. Neither did the COO, the CRO, or the VP of Product. Everyone had hit their numbers. Everyone had executed flawlessly. And the company was dying.
Winning Every Battle, Losing the War
Here’s what that company’s quarter looked like:
Sales exceeded quota by 15%. Product shipped every sprint on time. Marketing generated 2x their MQL target. Customer success improved NPS by 20 points.
Here’s what nobody tracked:
Burn rate increased 40%. Cash conversion cycle extended from 45 to 72 days. Working capital requirements ballooned by $3M.
Every team won. The company lost.
This is the execution gap: the space between operational excellence and financial reality. It’s not that OKRs are broken or EOS doesn’t work. It’s that they measure activity, not impact. They track what you’re doing, not whether it’s working.
Three Stories
The Unicorn
$1.2B valuation. Perfect OKR discipline. Every team, every quarter, cascading beautifully.
What they didn’t measure: customer concentration. Their largest customer was 40% of revenue. When that customer churned, they discovered their CAC payback had quietly extended to 18 months. The layoffs made TechCrunch.
The OKRs had all been green. Nobody had an OKR for “don’t let one customer become 40% of revenue.” Nobody had an OKR for “keep CAC payback under 12 months.” Those weren’t on the scorecard, so nobody watched them.
The EOS Champion
Professional services firm. Poster child for EOS implementation. Perfect Level 10 meetings. Clear accountability chart. Rocks completed religiously.
What they missed: project profitability was declining 2% monthly. They’d optimized for utilization—keeping people busy—instead of margin. By the time they noticed, they’d locked in 12 months of unprofitable work.
The rocks were all complete. “Improve utilization to 85%” was a rock. “Maintain margin above 35%” wasn’t. They hit the rock they were aiming at and missed the one that mattered.
The Growth Story
Fast-growing retailer. Hit every growth OKR for eight straight quarters. Revenue up 200%. Locations doubled. Team tripled.
What nobody measured: cash conversion cycle extended from 30 to 95 days. They were growing faster than they could collect. They grew themselves into bankruptcy.
The board celebrated every quarter. Revenue up, locations up, team up. The one chart that would have shown the problem—cash conversion over time—wasn’t in the deck.
The Measurement Problem
Traditional frameworks measure what’s easy to count:
“Increase user engagement by 30%.” But what’s the cash impact of that engagement?
“Launch three new features.” But what’s the working capital requirement?
“Improve sales velocity by 25%.” But what’s the collection risk of faster closes?
The measurement problem creates a dangerous illusion. Teams think they’re winning because they’re hitting targets. Leadership thinks the company is healthy because the scorecards are green. Everyone’s confident until the cash runs out.
The Timeline Problem
OKRs operate quarterly. EOS runs on 90-day rocks. Cash flows daily.
By the time your quarterly review reveals a problem, you’re not managing the present. You’re reviewing history. The crisis is already 90 days old. You’re just now finding out about it.
I watched a SaaS company learn this:
Days 1-30: Sales crushes quota selling annual deals with net-60 terms. Celebration.
Days 31-60: Cash collections lag. “Too early to worry.”
Days 61-90: Payroll stress begins. Credit line tapped.
Day 91: Quarterly review reveals the crisis. 90 days too late.
The information existed on Day 35. Nobody looked at it until Day 91. That’s the timeline problem. You’re always driving by looking in the rearview mirror.
What’s Actually Missing
The execution gap exists because companies measure operational activity without connecting it to financial reality.
Sales has a quota. But nobody asks what happens to cash when they hit it.
Product has a roadmap. But nobody models the working capital requirement.
Marketing has a pipeline target. But nobody calculates the CAC payback at current conversion rates.
Each function optimizes its own scorecard. Nobody optimizes for cash. So the functions all succeed while the company fails.
This is what Intelligence Rhythm solves. Not more metrics—different metrics. Not quarterly reviews—real-time visibility. Not departmental scorecards—enterprise-level cash impact.
The goal isn’t to abandon OKRs or EOS. They serve important purposes. The goal is to connect them to the thing that actually determines survival.
The Questions
If your leadership team can’t answer these in the room where they’re asked, you have an execution gap:
What’s our true cash runway at current burn? Not “roughly 12 months.” Precisely, with scenarios.
How does each major initiative impact working capital? Not just ROI. Cash timing.
What’s the financial impact of hitting versus missing each OKR? If you can’t quantify it, why is it an objective?
Where are we trading short-term metrics for long-term damage? Every company does this. Few measure it.
The Uncomfortable Part
Here’s what nobody wants to say: most companies are performing elaborate operational theater while their financial foundation erodes.
They’re optimizing deck chairs on the Titanic. Celebrating perfect arrangement while the ship takes on water.
The execution gap exists because we’ve become so sophisticated at measuring activity that we’ve forgotten to measure results. So good at hitting targets that we’ve forgotten to ask if they’re the right targets. So disciplined at execution that we’ve forgotten to ask what we’re executing toward.
Your OKRs aren’t broken. Your EOS isn’t failing.
They’re just incomplete. Missing the one element that determines whether all that operational excellence actually matters.
See how Intelligence Rhythm works →
