Introducing Our Sextuple Flight!
The series wraps with Clarity in the Glass: A Menu of Strategic Planning Wocktails, a curated distillation on how strategy is shaped, lived, and sustained. This menu is crafted for leaders ready to accelerate momentum and keep strategy alive beyond the boardroom.
Presenting the full menu:
🍸 Wocktail #7: To Strat-ini or To Plant-ini, That is the Question
Let’s clarify the myriad forms of “planning”. Business planning evaluates viability. Strategy crystallizes the choices. Strategic planning maps the long-term journey, while operational planning fuels execution. Enterprise planning ensures alignment across the organization as it scales.
✨ When strategy and planning are both distinguished and connected, confusion transforms to cohesion
🍸 Wocktail #8: The Tension Tonic
Strategy is shaped by the tension between aspiration, evidence, and alignment. Pursuing clarity and excessive consensus-building hinders progress. Strategic insight comes from embracing discomfort and decisions amid friction. A smooth strategic planning is likely not revealing what truly matters.
✨ Strategy needs tension to uncover its strength.
🍸 Wocktail #9: The NoGroni (i.e., Trade-Offs)
Strategy is the discipline of narrowing focus. It begins when ambition is forced to reckon with limited time, capital, talent, and bandwidth. Avoiding trade-offs means swapping clarity for chaos and momentum for noise. The most powerful strategies are shaped by what they exclude, not just what they pursue.
✨ What a strategy refuses defines its power.
🍸 Wocktail #10: The Off-Course Old Fashioned, Drift Happens
Strategic drift seeps in quietly as priorities shift and focus blurs. Not every deviation signals failure; some represent adaptation. The key is awareness and rhythm, not rigid control. Regular checkpoints and reflection prevent derailment.
✨ Drift is natural, kept it in check through ongoing review and realignment.
🍸 Wocktail #11: The Shadow Sidecar,  Strategy’s Silent Twin
Organizations operate with two strategies: the formal plan and the “shadow” strategy reflected in lived reality. When they diverge, trust erodes and informal systems take over. Closing this gap demands rigor: forums for alignment, metrics that reflect priorities, and leadership that embodies the strategy.
✨ Alignment between words and actions is the foundation of lasting success.
🍸 Wocktail #12: The Discipline Daiquiri
Strategic planning often becomes a periodic exercise disconnected from operational reality. The distinction lies in embracing it as a discipline woven into decision-making, alignment, and agility.
✨Sustained commitment ensures clarity, cohesion, and impact
Strategic planning isn’t a deliverable; it’s a leadership practice. Like any good craft, it requires repetition, reflection, and courage.