Most companies chase growth without understanding why their efforts fall short. The problem isn’t ambition or effort. It’s the disconnect between what leadership plans and what teams actually execute. David Lusk, managing partner at Evergreen Sales Group and chief revenue officer at Juno Health, has spent two decades fixing this exact problem for organizations ranging from Fortune 500 companies to fast-scaling businesses.
Aligning Strategy – Creating Clarity and Direction
Big goals look impressive on paper. Lusk has seen too many companies stumble because their strategies never make it past the executive suite. “Too often companies have an ambitious goal but lack a shared understanding of how they’re going to get there and win on the game board,” he explains. The real work starts when leadership translates those big ideas into something teams can actually use.
His time leading the call center at U.S. Bank proved this point. The team didn’t just need to know the company’s revenue targets. They needed to see how their daily work connected to those numbers. “We transformed performance by making strategic goals visible and relevant to each team’s daily actions,” Lusk says. The results spoke for themselves: a 32% revenue increase in the payment space and $22 million in bank cards revenue. Your strategy has to live in the conversations teams have every day, not just in marketing presentations gathering dust on someone’s laptop.
Operationalizing the Strategy – Turning Vision into Execution
Having a clear strategy is one thing. Building the operational structure to support it is where most organizations hit a wall. “Strategy without structure is frustration,” he points out. Companies get excited about their plans, then wonder why nothing changes. The missing piece is usually operational alignment.
At Evergreen Sales Group, the focus is on creating systems that connect every moving part. Sales, marketing, and customer service need to work in sync, not in silos. Lusk compares it to building a Formula One engine where precision matters. When one client in the professional services sector finally got their operations aligned with their strategy, things moved fast. Their sales cycle shortened by 25% and win rates jumped. It happened because the operational structure finally matched what they were trying to accomplish.
Coaching – Embedding Accountability and Growth
You can have perfect strategy and flawless operations. But neither one sticks without the third piece: coaching. This is what separates companies that hit goals once from those that sustain excellence year after year. “Strategy gives you direction, operations gives you structure, but coaching sustains the performance,” Lusk explains. During his tenure at Elevon, field performance improved dramatically when managers changed their approach. Instead of just directing tasks, they started developing decision-making skills in their teams. “Coaching creates ownership. It builds resilience. It turns strategy into culture,” he notes. Teams that understand not just the what and how, but also the why behind their work start making better decisions on their own.
The challenge for most leaders isn’t knowing these three elements matter. Lusk calls this alignment “sales intelligence,” and it’s what separates good companies from great ones. “When you align strategy, operations, and coaching, you create a business that doesn’t just hit goals. It sustains excellence.” His advice is straightforward: start by asking whether your team actually knows the why, the how, and the what behind your growth plan. If they don’t, you’ve found your next big opportunity. The gap between strategy and execution isn’t about working harder. It’s about building organizations that are as strategic in their execution as they are in their vision.
Follow David Lusk on LinkedIn for insights on aligning strategy, operations, and coaching for lasting business growth.
