Clients frequently ask me if I write strategic plans.

The answer is yes. And no.

I’ve been developing and overseeing strategy and compliance since around 2005. KPIs, strategic plans, regional plans, policies. procedures.

I’ve always been the nerd in the room, not afraid to slow things down by asking questions like, “What does this document absolutely have to achieve, and will it serve us or sink us?”

One day, I walked into my CEO’s office and announced:

“I’m not writing one more piece of strategic documentation for you.”

Once she’d retrieved her jaw from her keyboard and established this wasn’t my fancy way of resigning, she joined me at her meeting table.

“Why?”

Because what I was pumping out was a farce.

A vehicle policy setting safe driving limits, while senior leaders routinely exceeded them by 40-50% in front of junior staff. A KPI that targeted improvements in PPE, while managers followed their own fashion fads.

Bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy. Box-ticking. Compliance for the sake of compliance.

And the board’s contribution? All that time, expertise and oversight invested in documents we were required to produce, but which weren’t achieving their purpose.

Why do we create strategic plans?

At its simplest, strategy is about deciding what we need or want to achieve, how we’re going to get there and how we’ll know if we’ve succeeded.

A strategic plan helps people understand what to do first, second and last, what to advocate for, what to protect, when to have difficult conversations and where to direct resources.

It helps us know when to say ‘no’. And importantly, when to celebrate.

It should guide decisions all day, every day, helping teams work towards the same goals rather than pulling in different directions, while giving the board or council a way to assess whether the organisation is achieving what’s important.

Where strategic plans come unstuck

Most of us have some understanding of what our colleagues do while recognising we probably couldn’t do their jobs unsupervised.

The same applies to strategic planning.

Strategic plans are usually developed by a handful of specialists alongside the CEO, perhaps the board and an external facilitator. A room full of nerds.

A few printed copies appear next to the visitors’ chairs in the foyer. The digital version makes its way onto the website.

The box gets ticked.

But what about the people whose job it is to deliver it?

Not my plan

Why people choose to work for your organisation is personal, but powerful. Why not a different industry? Or your competition? Why you and why yours?

Your strategic plan is a direct expression of who you are and what you stand for.

Yet much of your organisation is likely more connected to the bureaucracy of the strategic plan than to the sentiment behind it.

People might know their KPIs. They might understand exactly what’s expected of them.

But knowing what you’re expected to deliver isn’t the same as having a hand in shaping what’s important.

You’re paying people for their expertise, judgement, initiative and commitment. But only to a point.

The value is in the disagreements

The best strategic plans I’ve ever written are the ones I didn’t write.

“Working with Libby has made our whole team feel like we have a voice and has empowered us to speak honestly to our managers. This means we all feel a greater sense of belonging to the team and connection to our purpose.”

Irene Bagol, Intake Officer, LinkUp Australia

When people with different responsibilities, experiences and opinions work through what the organisation prioritises, what it should stop doing and what it’s truly prepared to change, the benefits go well beyond a Plan on a Page.

Sometimes that’s uncomfortable. And that’s where the value lies.

The benefits you can’t easily measure

It makes sense for the people responsible for delivering the strategy to have a hand in shaping it. How broadly they’re involved will depend on the size, structure and complexity of the organisation.

Yes, bringing people to the table comes with a price tag. But consider the returns your finance manager may not initially see.

1. Learning to disagree productively

• Build relationships and trust: People get to know colleagues beyond their usual roles, creating connections that make working together smoother.
• Practise constructive disagreement: People learn to challenge ideas, have difficult conversations, negotiate and compromise without damaging relationships.
• See leadership in action: Staff see how senior leaders respond to challenge and grow in their confidence to manage up.

2. A stronger organisation

• Break down silos: People begin thinking beyond their own department, recognising how their decisions influence the whole organisation.
• Better decisions: Practising strategic thinking improves decision-making and helps people recognise and manage risk with maturity.
• Succession planning: Surface emerging talent while giving people opportunities to stretch and develop.

3. A strategy people see themselves in

• Mission, vision and values in action: Real-time practice applying the organisation’s strategic pillars to real decisions.
• Building champions: Give others the ownership and confidence to champion the strategy, freeing you to focus on what only you can do.
• Employee value proposition (EVP): Give your people a say in shaping the organisation’s future, rather than telling them they’re valued and empowered.

4. A better strategic plan

• Testing assumptions: The people who design the strategy aren’t necessarily the people who know what it will take to deliver it.
• Testing practicality: Identify risks and obstacles before committing to priorities that may be difficult or impossible to deliver.
• Testing priorities: Challenge competing demands and make informed decisions about where resources will have the greatest impact.
• Testing implementation: the conversations about how to put the strategy into practice are already live. Not twelve months later, when there’s been no progress on the strategy and someone calls to ask, “Can you run an Implementing Your Strategic Plan workshop?”

Best of all, when I drive off into the sunset, I don’t take all the expertise with me, leaving you with something that makes sense to me, and a bill.

It’s not how long it takes – it’s what happens along the way

Brushing your teeth for two minutes instead of one and a half takes longer. Choosing to run an extra kilometre at the gym takes longer. Taking the time to reread that contentious email before hitting send — takes longer.

Why should developing a strategic plan be any different?

Your strategic plan will guide thousands and thousands of decisions over the next three to five years. Many will happen while you’re not there, possibly even while you’re asleep or on leave. Some will be made in high-risk environments. Others could cost your organisation in a multitude of tangible and intangible ways.

Perhaps the question isn’t “Is this too expensive?” but “Where will the costs appear if we don’t get it right?”

Can you do it yourself?

When it’s time for a new or refreshed strategic plan, bringing in an independent strategic planning facilitator is often shelved for a quicker, more controlled option. DIY.

Of course that’s an option. Just as I could develop my own LinkedIn marketing strategy or service my incredibly intricate car. But someone who’s spent decades honing a skill will do it faster, see things I’d miss, call out risks, manage the elephant in the room and produce a better result.

Skilled strategic planning facilitation is honed through years of managing conversations, challenging thinking and knowing when to nudge people towards the elephant in the room — and when to just call it.

It’s an art, not a science.  

It’s recognising the biases and patterns nobody questions anymore, spotting the landmines everyone’s stopped managing but which stick out like a sore thumb, and knowing how to ask tough questions without unnecessarily putting valuable relationships — or careers — at risk.

Combine that with four decades of experience in management, leadership and corporate analysis, as well as 10+ years running my own business, and you’re bringing considerably more to the table than a few YouTube videos and a family-sized bag of salt and vinegar chips.

Bottom line is, other people can see our shit long before we can. What’s the cost of choosing not to look?

Can AI write your strategic plan?

Absolutely. AI can research, analyse, challenge assumptions and help produce a beautifully written and presented strategic plan in a fraction of the time.

But does making the process faster also make it better — or just faster?

I support AI as a tool in the process. I don’t support it as a replacement for the process.

It can’t replace what happens when the people responsible for delivering the strategy negotiate the difficult parts together.

So no, I won’t form your strategic plan for you.

But I’ll happily facilitate the discussions needed to shape it well, then turn your team’s passion, thinking and decisions into a document that gives them clarity, direction and something they can act on.

Yes, I might use AI to help write it. But I won’t use it to make the decisions that belong to your organisation.

The real test of your strategic plan

My protest about not writing another strategic document all those years ago wasn’t about the documents themselves. It was about the gap between what we said we were doing and what was actually happening.

We didn’t need better documents. We needed the ownership and commitment that come when the people responsible for putting them into practice have a hand in shaping them.

Strategic plans are no different.

Without ownership of the words, you could spend six figures or more just ticking a box.

Because the real test of your strategic plan isn’t what’s written in it. It’s what people choose to do because of it.