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Will It Make The Boat Go Faster Applies Elite Performance Lessons to Close the Execution Gap in Business

News Provided by ACCESS Newswire2026-01-30

LONDON, UK / ACCESS Newswire / January 30, 2026 /People, performance and leadership consultancy Will It Make The Boat Go Faster is applying elite performance principles drawn from Olympic sport to help executive teams close the execution gap that continues to hold back business growth. As organisations face increasing complexity, constant change and mounting performance pressure, the firm highlights that growth challenges are less about strategy design and more about leadership alignment, clarity of priorities and the disciplined execution required to turn ambition into results.

Plans are made with KPIs, targets are set, and strategy slide decks grow longer. Yet many leadership teams still struggle to convert these intentions into collective ambition, aligned action and consistent performance and results across their organisations.

In practice, the issue is rarely the absence of strategy. More often, it is a lack of shared clarity and alignment at the top - an agreed sense of what truly matters most - and an underestimation of the discipline, energy, and sustained focus required to follow through. Without this, even well-crafted strategies can lose momentum as competing priorities dilute attention, accountability weakens, and execution fragments.

"Will It Make The Boat Go Faster, " collaborates with executive teams across a range of industries, argues that this challenge reflects a distinction long understood in high-performance environments.

The philosophy emerged from Olympic rowing, where co-founder Ben Hunt-Davis was part of the GB men 's crew that transformed its performance in the 18 months leading up to the Games. Moving from seventh in the world to Olympic champions required the team to ruthlessly challenge how they worked, stripping away anything that did not serve their shared ambition. Absolute clarity of purpose, alignment around priorities, and the discipline to focus energy only where it mattered most became non-negotiable. Those same principles now underpin the firm 's work with leadership teams.

"When we won Olympic gold, the breakthrough came from being absolutely clear on what would make the difference and having the courage to challenge everything that didn 't serve it, " said Hunt-Davis, Olympic gold medallist, co-founder and CEO of Will It Make The Boat Go Faster. "In our work with executive teams today, we see the same dynamic. Many organisations have a strategy, but without collective clarity, alignment, and honest challenge at the top, many falter when it comes to putting it into practice. High performance comes from leaders agreeing on what matters most - and consistently acting in service of it. "

Across sectors, the consultancy sees a familiar pattern. Executive teams often reach a stage where what got them here will not get them where they need to go. There is no shortage of intelligence, effort, or commitment, yet progress begins to stall. Leaders find themselves firefighting rather than moving strategically forward. Teams work hard, but not always together. Priorities compete, silos re-emerge, and organisational energy disperses. To be able to evolve, they need to try something different.

In these moments, the challenge is rarely solved by more analysis or another initiative. Instead, it requires leadership teams to re-establish a shared ambition that genuinely matters, clarify the critical few priorities that will make the greatest difference now, and create the conditions for honest, high-performance conversations. Alignment, in this sense, is not about agreement for its own sake, but about achieving collective clarity on the why, so that decisions about the what and the how become simpler and faster.

A critical barrier is that execution is frequently treated as an operational issue rather than a leadership one. Strategy is discussed in the boardroom, while delivery is delegated downstream. High-performing teams behave differently. They continually evaluate decisions against their shared ambition, remove "junk miles " that dilute focus, and hold one another accountable not just for functional performance, but for shared outcomes. Alignment is treated not as a one-off event, but as an ongoing leadership discipline.

For executive teams operating under mounting pressure - from markets, shareholders, and their own organisations - this mindset is becoming a commercial imperative. Growth is no longer driven by periodic strategy resets, but by the ability to execute with clarity and consistency over time. That requires leaders to stay aligned at the top, model the behaviours they expect to see, and sustain the energy required to turn intent into action.

These ideas are explored further in the bestselling book Will It Make The Boat Go Faster?A book co-authored by Hunt-Davis and Harriet Beveridge, which examines how teams in both sport and business achieve sustained performance through clarity, alignment, and disciplined execution.

Will It Make The Boat Go Faster, continues to support executive teams in building this capability - helping organisations move beyond well-intentioned strategies towards sustained performance. As the pace of change accelerates, the firms that succeed will not be those with the most sophisticated plans, but those able to execute with collective focus, alignment, and discipline - closing the gap between ambition and execution.

About Will It Make The Boat Go Faster?

London Based "Will It Make The Boat Go Faster? " is a consultancy that helps executive teams improve performance by applying principles proven in high-performance environments. Working with organisations like Primark, Haribo, Henkel and Bluefield, the firm supports leaders to build clarity, alignment, and execution discipline around what matters most. Learn more atwillitmaketheboatgofaster.com.

Authors:

Ben Hunt-Davis - Olympic Gold Medallist, CEO & Co-Founder of WIMTBGF?

Josh Trebilcock - Head of Marketing at WIMTBGF?

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