Hey Changemakers,
A few weeks ago, I was prepping for a strategy session and caught myself spending way too long thinking about the room setup. The chairs. The snacks. Whether the Post-its should be color-coded by theme or by table. (Yes, really.)
And then it hit me: I was directing a production.
I’d been so focused on staging a great experience that I’d nearly forgotten the point. Strategy isn’t a show. It’s a practice. We’re not here to watch something unfold on stage. We’re here to work together, make hard calls, and walk out with commitments we actually intend to keep.
I call this trap strategy theater. It sounds earnest, it costs real money, and it produces beautifully designed decks that gather digital dust. Mission, values, shiny new goals. They all sit on top of each other instead of connecting to daily choices.
Strategy theater doesn’t just waste time. It leaves your organization dangerously fragile. I once worked with an organization that had done strong strategic work. But the strategy lived almost entirely in the mind of one leader. When she moved on, the board had turned over too, and the new team looked at the existing strategic framework, called it “gobbledygook,” and reverted to what a friend of mine calls the “sticky note manifesto”: a mishmash of well-intentioned but vague ideas scribbled on Post-its, and popped into a plan. Years of good thinking and meaningful progress, gone.
That’s what happens when strategy doesn’t have connective tissue. When there’s nothing linking your big-picture vision to how people make decisions on a Tuesday afternoon. The whole thing one leadership transition away from irrelevance.
So I’m calling myself out. And maybe you, too. Let’s get sharper about the gap between strategic planning and strategic execution. If we know what to look for, we can stop ourselves before we spend another season performing change instead of making it.
Here are the red flags.
Polite Alignment Without Rigorous Commitment
The first one’s sneaky because it feels like a win. It’s the meeting that goes so quickly, so pushback-free, that you leave thinking, “Wow, we’re really aligned!”
Except you’re not. You’ve skipped the hard work of wrestling with priorities and trade-offs and refining and clarifying your next steps. Your team never fully buys into the plan because no one has to fight for anything. Polite alignment feels good in the room, but it can cost you dearly afterward.
The “We Just Need to Check This Off” Mentality
I had a call recently where the executive director said, “We just need to do a strat plan and check it off the list.” Zoop! Up went my antennae. If you approach strategic planning like a box to tick, you’re creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you’re not serious about charting your course into the future, the work won’t be serious either.
Burnout usually fuels this flag, and I get it. I’ve felt that just-cross-it-off itch. But strategy theater is expensive, and it adds to the very fatigue we’re trying to reduce.
Winging It and Calling It Brainstorming
This guy hides in plain sight. There’s a difference between a real brainstorming session and one that’s quietly covering up for a lack of preparation. Like a carpenter who skips measuring and ends up with a crooked cut, leaders who skip the prep are left with jagged edges and bruised relationships.
When you’re leading smart, mission-driven people, you owe them thoughtful architecture. Winging it creates more work downstream, and your team knows the difference, even if they don’t say so.
No Clear “No” List
Strategy without subtraction is sprawl. Any good strategic plan should answer this question: “If we’re saying ‘yes’ to this, what are we saying ‘no’ to?”
If your planning session is all green lights, that’s a red flag. You need to articulate what you’ll forgo and how you’ll hold yourself accountable to that decision. Otherwise, it’s wishcasting, not a plan.
So, How Do We Actually Convert Plans Into Change?
Once you spot these red flags, you can stop performing strategy and start practicing it. Three disciplines make the difference:
Build accountability infrastructure. Define and use leading indicators and lagging indicators. Hold regular, course-correcting check-ins, not reporting rituals. I wrote about this last September on thoughtfully distressing your team, and it’s worth revisiting here.
Measure twice, cut once. Design meetings with a clear purpose and structure before you enter the room. Don’t wing it. Last month’s newsletter on branding your meetings by intent goes deeper on this.
Create clear decision rights. Who decides what, and when? How will you help each other stay on course with each ‘no’ you commit to? January’s newsletter on creating spaces for shared vision is a good companion read.
Strategy theater is seductive because it feels productive. But when the play is over, nothing changes backstage. Real strategy is a series of disciplined choices, reinforced over time.
Time to close the curtain and get to the real work. You’ve got this!
Until next time,
Kimberley
