Executive capacity is described in terms of directing the organization or a major component of it, setting goals and policies, exercising wide discretion, and receiving only general supervision. A senior operational role may be demanding and well paid while still being supervised in its day-to-day decisions, which is a different thing.
Ask who has to approve what, and write down the answer
The quickest honest test is to take a fortnight of the person's actual decisions and mark which ones required approval from someone else. A role where almost everything of consequence is signed off elsewhere is being supervised, whatever the title on the door. A role where the individual sets the direction and reports results rather than seeking permission fits the description the category uses.
It is also possible for a genuinely executive role to be described badly, which is the more common problem: petitions written by people who want to demonstrate that the employee is valuable rather than that the position is executive. Both the facts and their description matter, and a licensed U.S. immigration attorney should assess them against the specific evidence.
Hypothetical example: Pema directs an architectural-acoustics studio and is nominated to lead its U.S. subsidiary. Start with a decision matrix showing what she approves without permission, which managers report to her and which tasks are performed by others.
Board delegations, budgets and reporting lines settle the issue more reliably than a prestigious title. The proper sequence is to map the foreign role, the U.S. role and the organizational relationship before drafting duties.
What goes wrong is a petition that proves technical excellence but shows constant supervision. The file must also establish a full unbroken year of qualifying overseas work in the applicable lookback period; L-1A cannot exceed seven years.