I once sat through a strategy presentation so beautifully designed I almost forgot to notice it made no sense. Gorgeous fonts. A waterfall chart. The word “synergy” used, I counted, four times. Everyone in the room nodded. Nobody in the room was going to be the one who actually had to implement it.
That’s the bit nobody puts in the deck — who’s doing this, with what time, against what else they’re already drowning in. I’ve watched brilliant thinking die quietly in someone’s inbox because the plan assumed a version of the business that didn’t exist yet: fully staffed, fully aligned, fully rested. (Reader, it was none of those things. It’s never any of those things.)
I don’t start with a framework anymore, because frameworks are borrowed from someone else’s business, and yours isn’t that one. I start by asking what’s actually going on — who’s tired, who’s territorial, what got tried before and quietly buried. Unglamorous questions. They’re also the only ones that tell you whether the plan will survive its first Monday morning.
Growth and profit are the destination. But I’ve stopped being precious about the route — mostly because the prettiest route is rarely the one that gets you there.
