Strategic Planning

Most strategic plans fail somewhere between the offsite and the operating year — not because the thinking was wrong, but because the leadership team never converged on the hard choices and the board was only shown the result at the end.

We run a milestone-based process that moves a leadership team from evidence, to genuine choices, to a written plan — with the board involved throughout rather than presented to at the end. And because we are a leadership development firm, the plan names the leadership capability required to deliver it, not just the targets.

A full engagement runs several months and follows a consistent sequence:

• One-on-one discovery interviews across the leadership team and the board

• A review of financials, prior plans, and competitive context, so the work starts from evidence rather than opinion
• A sequence of full-day working sessions moving the team from findings, to strategic choices, to a finalized plan
• Board debriefs interspersed throughout, so the board shapes the plan as it develops
  
• Everything converges into a Plan on a Page the leadership team owns: where you will play, how you will win, and what has to be true for it to work. The format draws on the Strategy Choice Cascade from Playing to Win by A.G. Lafley and Roger Martin — a discipline that forces a leadership team to make real choices rather than assemble a list of priorities.