Vaulting ambition: When growth outruns judgement

I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself and falls on the other

This line in Macbeth about “vaulting ambition” has stayed with me for years.

What Shakespeare was actually using as a metaphor was that if you jump on a horse too quickly, you'll fall off the other side and look stupid.

It is his way of describing the moment when desire outruns judgement. When someone wants something so badly that they stop asking the difficult questions and start assuming that momentum itself will carry them over the line.

I see that in business more often than you might think.

Especially when owners start talking about expansion.

A bigger building. More surgeries. A prestige postcode. A property purchase that “sets us up for the future”.

The excitement is understandable. Growth is attractive. Property feels substantial. Owning the freehold sounds grown-up and strategic. And sometimes it is.

But debt does not care about your vision.

Debt wants feeding every month.

That is the bit people forget when the spreadsheet is glowing and the artist’s impression is pinned to the wall. Borrowing magnifies outcomes. If the plan is sound, debt can accelerate progress. If the plan is loose, optimistic or emotionally driven, debt simply magnifies the mistake.

Recently, a client showed me a property purchase plan that made me very uncomfortable.

On paper, it looked ambitious and impressive. In real life, it would have loaded the business with risk at exactly the wrong moment. Too much debt, too many assumptions, too much faith in future growth that had not yet been proven. There were too many “we’ll sort that later” gaps in the thinking.

And so I had to do what coaches are occasionally paid not to do.

I had to say "no".

Or, more accurately, I had to say, not this, not now, not at this scale.

That is never the easiest conversation. Nobody hires a coach hoping to be told to think smaller. Owners want encouragement, momentum and confidence. They want you to back the dream. But there are moments in this job when the most valuable thing you can offer is restraint.

Less, not more.

Smaller, not grander.

Manageable, not heroic.

Because the truth is that expansion without a properly considered game plan is not strategy. It is theatre. The business still has to support the debt. The chairs still have to be filled. The team still has to be recruited. The workflow still has to function. And the owner still has to sleep at night.

A good coach understands that ambition is not the enemy. Unexamined ambition is.

Some of the best advice I have ever given has been advice that disappointed people in the moment. On more than one occasion, it has probably cost me the relationship altogether. I have been fired before now for refusing to endorse a plan that felt reckless.

That is part of the deal. If your role is to protect the client, you cannot always tell them what they want to hear.

You have to tell them what the numbers, the timing and the risk profile are really saying.

The happy outcome, in this particular case, is that the client listened. We talked the plan down to something smaller, saner and more manageable. Not a retreat. Not a loss of ambition. Just a version of growth that the business could realistically carry.

That is often the real work.

Not pouring petrol on the fire.

Just making sure the fire stays in the grate.