Most leaders don’t complain about a lack of plans.
They complain about this:
“We already had our strategic planning. People are still scattered. Everyone is busy. I’m not sure we’re focused.”
On paper, the company looks prepared. There’s a plan. There are timelines. There are owners.
But in the real world, managers still chase too many things at once. Priorities change every week. People feel stretched, not strategic.
That’s the gap this page is about.
We Start With What People Call “Strategic Planning”
When people hear “strategic planning,” they think of the familiar ritual.
You book a hotel or a nice function room. You bring in slides, data, and a facilitator. You do SWOT, write a vision, list goals, create initiatives.
At the end of the day, you have a document. It looks complete. It feels serious.
I’m not dismissing that. It’s where most teams are, and it’s a useful starting point.
But I am not talking about strategic planning in the traditional sense.
What I care about is what happens inside that process:
- Do leaders make real choices about how to win?
- Do they narrow down, or just add more?
- Do they walk out with a sharper game—or just a thicker file?
That difference is everything.
Strategy Is Not the Plan
You can have a beautiful strategic plan and still have no real strategy.
A plan answers, “What will we do, when, and who will do it?”
Strategy answers, “Out of all the ways we could win, which few will we bet on?”
You can list a hundred smart ideas:
Enter new markets. Launch new products. Improve service. Go digital. Cut costs. Build culture. And more.
But strategy is not about keeping all one hundred. Strategy is about discovering which two or three:
- are ten or a hundred times more powerful than the rest,
- reinforce each other when you choose them together, and
- give you the best results for the effort you can realistically invest.
Sometimes strategy also asks for courage—to start something your organization has never done before, and to stop something that has always been “untouchable.”
The plan is how you organize the work. The strategy is the set of choices that give that work its power.
Focus Is a Product of Those Choices
Leaders often treat “focus” as another part of the agenda.
First vision, then mission, then values, then strategy, then plan, then “focus.”
It doesn’t work that way.
Focus is not a heading in the document. Focus is a product of the choices you make while you’re creating your strategy.
Think of a camera.
If everything is in the frame, nothing stands out. The moment you choose what to focus on, the rest moves to the background.
Strategy is that act of choosing.
When you and your managers say:
“This is the game we’re playing. These are the customers we’ll win with. These are the offers we’ll build around. These are the moves that multiply each other.”
—you don’t need to add “focus” as a separate topic. Focus shows up on its own.
People know where to look. They start saying no to good ideas that don’t fit the game.
The Team With Too Many “Priorities”
I once worked with a company that had a very polished strategic planning output.
They had nine strategic pillars and dozens of initiatives. The document looked impressive. The CEO was proud to present it.
When I sat with their managers, I asked a simple question:
“Tell me the top three plays we are making to win in the next three years.”
They flipped pages. They quoted phrases. Some gave me long lists. No one could name three clear, agreed moves.
What happened?
During planning, they had tried to include every good suggestion. No one wanted to let go of their own project. The result was a plan that tried to be everything for everyone.
On paper, they had focus. In practice, they had crowding.
We spent a day not creating more content, but stripping away.
We asked:
- Which of these pillars truly drive our future?
- Which initiatives multiply each other when we run them together?
- Which look nice but don’t move the needle enough?
- Which ones belong to “business as usual” and don’t need to be called strategic?
By the end of the day, they had fewer pillars, fewer initiatives, and a lot more energy.
Their managers finally saw how the pieces fit together. They weren’t just “implementing the plan.” They were playing a chosen game.
Focus appeared because they made choices.
Moving From Documenting to Deciding
Many planning sessions are really documentation sessions.
People collect what they already do, dress it up in strategic language, and place it in a neat template.
It feels safe. No one gets challenged. Nothing truly ends. Nothing truly begins.
But if you want focus, you have to treat planning as a decision space, not a documentation space.
That means asking sharper questions while you plan:
- Out of all the ways we could grow, which one or two will we commit to first?
- Which customers will we serve better than anyone else—and which customers will we stop chasing?
- Which offers and services will we build around for the next three to five years?
- What must we stop doing so these choices have room to breathe?
- What bold move, if we start it now, can change the game for us?
You don’t need more lines in your plan. You need more courage in your choices.
Once those choices are made, the plan becomes simpler. Focus becomes visible.
People can say, “This is exactly why we’re doing this and not that.”
A Different Kind of Strategy Session
So when I work with a leadership team, I don’t promise “traditional strategic planning.”
We start from what people understand—yes, we talk about goals, initiatives, and plans. That’s familiar ground.
But we don’t stop there.
We slow down at the moments that matter:
- when you choose which ways of winning truly count,
- when you decide which plays belong together, and
- when you agree on what you will finally let go of.
We use the planning process as a container for strategy. We turn the session into a place where leaders think together, challenge each other, and make deliberate choices.
The output might still be a document. It will be thinner, sharper, and more honest.
More importantly, the real output will be in people’s heads:
- a shared understanding of the game you’re playing,
- a few powerful ways you intend to win it, and
- the focus that comes naturally from those decisions.
If You Want Your Planning to Become Strategy
If you only want a traditional planning workshop, there are many people who can help you fill in the usual templates.
My work is different.
I help leadership teams use their planning time to do real strategy work—examining their options, exploring different ways of winning, and choosing the few moves that truly deserve their focus.
If you want your next “strategic planning” to shift from documenting everything to deciding what really matters, reach out through this site.
We can design a Strategy Shift Experience where your managers don’t just leave with a plan. They leave with choices they believe in—and the focus that comes with them.
If you’re building a business and you are playing to win…
Let’s install one shift that moves metrics.
→ Shift Experiences
