Leaders at growing companies rarely lack advice. Assessments, frameworks, offsites, 360 reviews — there’s no shortage of input about what they could do differently. The harder part is figuring out what actually needs to change right now.
An executive can walk away from a leadership program with a long list of things to work on and still have no clear answer for what should look different on Monday morning. At a fast-growing company, where roles shift every few months, trying to improve everything at once usually means making real progress on nothing.
That’s the thinking behind a more deliberate approach to executive coaching that Lucas Wren uses with leaders at fast-growing companies. His process focuses on identifying the one issue creating the most friction right now and addressing that first — because fixing the problem that’s slowing decisions matters more than adding another set of goals.
Leadership Roles Can Change Quickly in Growing Companies
Traditional leadership development assumes a leader will have time to gradually grow into a role. Growth-stage companies rarely offer that.
A vice president who starts the year managing nine people might end it running sixty, with managers now between her and work she once handled herself. Decisions she used to make now need to happen without her. Things that got communicated informally need structure. The title stays the same. The job doesn’t.
That’s also what makes broad development plans hard to follow at this stage. For Lucas Wren, the better question is simply: what’s causing the most damage right now?
Narrowing Down What Actually Needs to Change
Precision coaching starts by getting close to what’s happening in the leader’s actual work — not just what the leader thinks is happening.
Maybe decisions keep escalating to someone who shouldn’t be making them. A recurring meeting chews through hours without producing anything clear. A leader is still holding responsibilities that should have moved on months ago, or avoiding a conversation that’s quietly affecting the whole team.
These are far easier to work with than vague goals like “become a more strategic communicator.” The first conversations are about pinning down where the problem is actually showing up. What keeps getting delayed? Where does information stop moving? Which problems keep coming back after the team thinks they’ve been fixed?
The answers are usually specific — and that specificity is where the real work begins.
What Precision Coaching Requires
A focused engagement needs a few things to work properly.
Looking at the actual work, not just the leader’s description of it. A calendar, a meeting structure, a pattern of decisions — these often tell a different story. The goal is to understand what’s actually happening, not a secondhand version of it.
Questioning habits that have outlived their usefulness. A lot of leadership problems Wren sees began as strengths. A founder who personally approved every hire when the team was small kept standards high — and at some point started slowing the whole organization down without seeing it. Coaching creates space to recognize when something that worked before no longer fits.
Keeping a clear timeframe. A defined period stops every new problem from taking over the conversation and creates a natural moment to ask: what actually changed?
Measuring Whether Anything Changed
Leadership doesn’t produce clean metrics. But there are usually things worth watching.
If decisions keep landing on someone who shouldn’t be making them, track whether that shifts. If a process has been consistently slow, watch whether the pace improves. Agreeing on a few specific things to observe before starting gives both people something real to discuss — not just whether the sessions felt useful.
Precision Coaching Isn’t the Right Tool for Everything
Narrower coaching has real limits. If the diagnosis is off at the start, a leader can spend months working on the wrong thing. And some situations need more room — a leader rethinking how they want to work, or navigating something without a quick answer.
About Lucas Wren
Lucas Wren works with executives and founders at fast-growing companies, especially during periods of rapid change when responsibilities shift and old habits stop working. Much of his work involves turning leadership goals into changes in weekly habits, improving how decisions move through an organization, and helping executives recognize when responsibilities they once needed to own can now be handled by someone else. Precision coaching doesn’t try to fix everything. It tries to fix the right thing first.
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