The meeting that makes it obvious something’s off is usually the one where all the activity looks the same, but the results don’t.

The team is doing what it’s always done. Campaigns are running. Channels are active. Ideas are being added. And yet, performance hasn’t moved the way anyone expected it to.

That’s often the moment when two instincts show up.

One is to retreat to what used to work. The other is to spend more, hoping volume will force results.

Neither one really addresses the problem.

Most leaders reach out at this point because they’ve decided something needs to change. What they usually arrive with is a tactic. Add radio. Try a print ad. Do an event. Increase the budget.

But tactics are almost never where the change needs to start.

In fact, changing tactics before addressing strategy, message, and audience often makes things worse. It adds motion without improving direction.

One of the clearest signals of an insight gap is a leadership team that agrees on what to do, but not why they’re doing it. Everyone may nod along to adding another channel, but priorities underneath that decision are fuzzy. The rationale doesn’t fully line up. And without realizing it, the team starts hoping the tactic will solve a clarity problem it can’t actually fix.

This is where the work shifts.

Closing an insight gap usually means slowing the conversation just enough to back up. Not to scrap everything. Not to start over. But to ask the questions that haven’t been asked yet.

Who are we really trying to reach right now? What do we believe about them that’s still true, and what might not be? What is this strategy actually trying to accomplish before we decide how to execute it?

When those questions are addressed first, something noticeable happens in the room.

Shoulders drop. The conversation gets quieter. Optimism improves.

Not because everyone suddenly agrees on every detail, but because the logic becomes visible. Leaders can trace a line from insight to strategy, from strategy to message, and from message to tactics. Decisions stop feeling arbitrary. People stop worrying that there’s something important they’re missing.

That’s usually the moment confidence returns.

From there, changes to messaging or tactics make sense. They’re no longer guesses. They’re responses. And even when the direction shifts, it feels intentional rather than reactive.

This is what closing an insight gap looks like in practice. It’s not dramatic. It’s clarifying.

And once clarity is back in place, momentum follows naturally.

Not because the team is doing more. But because everyone understands why they’re doing what they’re doing.