Strategic planning isn’t a deliverable. It’s a leadership discipline.
Wocktail #12, The Discipline Daiquiri: When Planning Becomes Practice, explores what occurs when strategy planning is treated as a cycle to complete, rather than an enduring capability.
In many companies, planning unfolds as an episodic event: an offsite is held, a plan is produced and presented, and then quietly set aside. The business resumes its rhythm, pulled by the gravitational force of day-to-day operations.
What this reveals is a deeper tension between two fundamentally different planning models:
- Event-based planning focuses on producing a strategic output, a deliverable to create a moment of alignement.
- Discipline-based planning embeds strategic thinking into how the organization makes decisions, manages performance, and adapts over time.
The gap between these two approaches becomes visible over time:
❌ Planning is isolated from decision-making
❌ Strategy is revisited by calendar
❌ Execution outpaces direction
🔑 High-performing organizations flip this model. They treat planning not as a phase, but as infrastructure: a system that enables clarity, cohesion, and responsiveness over time.
They build the discipline by:
✅ Maintaining quarterly reviews and re-alignment
✅ Creating forums that reinforce strategic trade-offs
✅ Ensuring visibility between priorities, resources and outcomes
✅ Modelling leadership behaviours that allow for adaptation without losing focus
💡 Strong strategy isn’t defined by how well it starts; it’s in how well it sustains. The plan will evolve but the discipline is what keeps it active, relevant, real and alive!