How Shawn Johal of Elevation Leaders Turns Strategy Into Action with Align

It’s the silent killer of growth: the endless pull of day-to-day fires, the sense that no matter how much you plan, the strategy never quite makes it off the page. Shawn Johal calls it “the vortex”—where 98% of a leader’s time gets swallowed by operations, leaving just scraps of attention for the future.

He knows it because he’s lived it.

Before becoming a Scaling Up coach, Shawn was an entrepreneur running a fast-growing LED lighting company. He and his team were ambitious, but like so many others, they risked losing momentum in the swirl of competing priorities. That changed when Shawn discovered Align, a software that embedded the Scaling Up framework into daily habits. What began as a tool to bring structure to his own business became the backbone of his coaching practice, a way to help clients escape the vortex and build businesses that grow with rhythm, discipline, and clarity.

“We were kind of [like] guinea pigs,” he laughs. “I was running my LED lighting company, and Align was just starting out. We got in early and worked alongside them to make suggestions.”

Shawn immersed himself in Align from the very beginning—testing and uncovering every way it could turn strategy into action. Over time, he became more than just a user; he became an implementation expert. But the real question was still ahead of him:

Could the mastery he built for himself translate into lasting success for the clients he would one day coach?

From “The Vortex” to 20% Strategy

When Shawn stepped fully into coaching, he brought with him more than software expertise—he carried a living case study of how Align could hardwire good business habits into a company’s DNA.

He often calls it “Scaling Up in a software”—a way to take the pillars, disciplines, and rhythms of the methodology and embed them into a single platform. For Shawn, that structure is the dividing line between simply understanding the Scaling Up framework and actually executing it in a way that builds unstoppable momentum.

The companies that land on his doorstep often tell two different stories. Some are riding a wave of growth, hungry to accelerate, but lacking the systems to sustain it. Far more arrive stuck in place. Growth has stalled. Cashflow is tight. Leadership is consumed by putting out daily fires while the bigger picture slips further from view. Strategy exists on paper, but in practice, it gets swallowed by the vortex of day-to-day operations—where 98% of energy is spent.

Shawn knows the cycle all too well:

• A company invests in a high-energy planning session
• The leadership team leaves armed with a 40-slide deck or a polished one-page plan
• Within weeks, the plan is buried in a folder, weighed down by the grind of daily business

"You can’t just leave the strategy on paper. You need something to make it visible, measurable, and connected to what people do every week. Without that, it’s way too easy to lose focus."

That’s where he starts with clients. With a foundation of discipline, Shawn leans on the four Scaling Up pillars to pinpoint the true constraints. Then, step by step, he helps leaders install the rhythms and habits that transform scattered intentions into an operating system for growth..

Shawn’s Playbook for Implementation

1. Find the Constraint

Every engagement begins with a deep dive into the four Scaling Up pillars: People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash. “Sometimes they’re stuck on revenue, sometimes they can’t deliver what they’ve sold. Either way, we start with a clear picture of where the real constraint is.”

2. Two-Day Kickoff

• Day 1: Purpose, values, BHAG, brand promises, core customer
• Day 2: Right people/seats, three-year targets, one-year goals, quarterly priorities, and meeting rhythms

3. Hardwire It Into Align

The plan goes straight into the platform: quarterly priorities, owners, due dates, and KPIs are all visible from the start.

4. Cascading the Habits

Year one is about getting the executive team fluent in Align. Only once they’ve mastered the rhythms does Shawn cascade it down to directors, managers, and eventually the entire company. And, he says, that’s when the real magic happens.

5. Sustain Momentum

Quarterly planning sets the direction, but mid-quarter visibility helps keep companies focused on the targets.

Magical Momentum

While Shawn sees the Priorities module as the single most powerful lever for impact, he’s clear that true transformation comes when clients embrace all of Align’s modules and roll them out across every team. The clients who go all in become true Gazelles, achieving an average of 15% growth year over year and often doubling in five years or less. By weaving the disciplines of the software into the daily fabric of the business, every department and every individual is Aligned around the same rhythms.

Shawn lights up, pointing out Xpertek as a living example of what full adoption looks like. "They run every module—one-page plan, priorities, huddles, weekly meetings, KPIs, department-level critical numbers. It’s like watching a really well-oiled machine. You walk in and everyone knows what matters this quarter and how they’re tracking."

For him, Xpertek represents more than operational discipline. It’s proof that when Align becomes the operating system of the business, growth and execution no longer feel forced. They happen rhythmically, quarter after quarter. And as a coach, the ripple effect is just as powerful: his own work scales more easily, because he spends less time chasing manual updates and more time guiding strategy.

The contrast is striking when clients resist the platform.

In his view, companies that avoid adoption often drift. Without a shared system to keep priorities front and center, they risk losing alignment, missing targets, and ultimately stalling their growth.

The Mid-Quarter Advantage

For Shawn, this visibility is a game-changer. Instead of waiting until the end of the quarter to discover missed goals, he can identify risks early and help leaders to redirect focus. It transforms the coaching dynamic too: instead of showing up at quarterly planning sessions with surprises and disappointments, he guides them to stay on rhythm and return to the actions that keep them on course.

"I’ll scan the dashboard. If I see priorities slipping, I can jump in before it’s too late. Without Align, you don’t know you’re off track until the quarter’s over—and by then, the opportunity’s gone."

That mid-quarter clarity often makes the difference between a team that barely limps across the finish line and one that finishes strong, with momentum heading into the next quarter.

The Results

For Shawn, the real success isn’t just in helping clients write a sharper plan—it’s in watching them execute with confidence quarter after quarter. With Align, his clients move from reactive firefighting to proactive leadership, replacing the chaos of the “vortex” with steady, measurable progress.

The numbers tell the story: companies that fully embrace Align’s methodology consistently grow and often double revenue within five years. But Shawn is just as quick to point out the human side. Leaders feel less overwhelmed, teams find clarity in their daily work, and entire organizations rediscover the energy that comes from moving in unison.

He advises coaches not just to recommend Align, but to live it: implement it in their own organizations, know it inside and out, and bring that conviction to their clients. In his view, the future of coaching is not about leaving leaders with thick binders or forgotten slide decks. It’s about equipping them with a living, breathing system that transforms ambition into execution.