I’m standing in the middle of my kitchen, and my left foot has just discovered a cold, lukewarm puddle of unknown origin through the medium of a fresh wool sock. It is a specific, localized betrayal. The moisture seeps through the fibers, hitting the skin with a damp reality that contradicts the dry safety I assumed I possessed only 7 seconds ago. This is exactly how it feels to realize your annual strategic plan is a work of absolute fiction, usually around the 7th week of the new year.
We spend the tail end of every year engaged in a strange, expensive ritual. We gather 17 executives in a room that smells faintly of pressurized air and expensive roast coffee. We commit to 87 hours of collective deliberation. We stare at 77-page slide decks that promise a future as neatly organized as a honeycomb. We build spreadsheets with 2027 revenue targets calculated down to the decimal point, as if the universe cares about our desire for a 7% increase in market share. It is an exercise in creative writing disguised as mathematics. We are novelists with MBAs, weaving a narrative about a world that doesn’t exist yet, ignoring the fact that the floor is already getting wet.
The majority of these plans are discarded by the time the first snow melts. A competitor pivots, a supply chain in 7 different countries collapses, or a global shift renders the ‘Primary Growth Pillar’ as relevant as a VCR. Yet, we don’t stop. We cannot stop. The human brain craves the illusion of control more than it craves the truth. We would rather have a map of a fictional kingdom than no map at all while we wander through the woods.
Complexity as Fog
There is a profound discomfort in admitting that we don’t know what will happen in the next 127 days. Admission of ignorance is seen as a weakness in the C-suite, so we compensate with complexity. The more complex the plan, the more we believe in its validity. If it has 777 lines of data, it must be true. But complexity is just a fog we use to hide the cliff. We are so busy looking at the numbers ending in 7 that we forget to look out the window. The annual plan is less a roadmap and more a security blanket.
Lines of Data
(The Fog)
The Wet Sock
(The Reality)
I’ve seen organizations spend $107,007 on consultants to help them ‘visualize the horizon.’ They produce beautiful, laminated books. They use words like ‘synergy’ and ‘transformation’ as if they were magical incantations. Then, a week after the ink dries, a literal puddle appears on the kitchen floor. The laminated book becomes a very expensive doorstop.
From Fiction to Feedback: The Living Pulse
This is where the paradigm needs to shift from fiction to feedback. Instead of a static document, we need a living pulse. We need systems that behave more like Oscar D.’s glass-understanding the tension, the bloom, and the age of the environment. If your strategy cannot change in 7 minutes, it isn’t a strategy; it’s a monument.
This is exactly why companies are moving toward data-driven, adaptive systems like those developed by
Intellisea, where the focus is on responding to the market in real-time rather than following a script written in a different season. It’s about trading the security blanket for a sensory array.
Adaptive System Development
87%
The Humility of Error
I once calculated the overhead for a project and forgot to include the cost of 7 essential licenses. It was a humiliating error that threw the whole budget off by $17,000. My first instinct was to hide it, to massage the other numbers until it disappeared. But then I thought about the wet sock. The floor is wet whether I admit it or not. Hiding the leak doesn’t dry the floor.
Ignored Reality
Accepted Variables
When we treat the annual plan as a sacred text, we lose our ability to be curious. Curiosity is the only real defense against a chaotic market. If you are wedded to your plan, you see the shift as a personal insult. We must learn to write our plans in pencil and our values in ink.
The Towel Trumps the Audit
The ritual of the annual plan isn’t entirely useless, of course. It gets people in the same room. But we must stop pretending it’s a prophecy. It’s a rehearsal. The goal shouldn’t be to follow the plan; the goal should be to develop the wisdom to know when to throw it away.
I’m back in the kitchen now, having changed my sock. The floor is still wet.
🧹
The annual plan would tell me to schedule a plumbing audit for the third quarter. Reality tells me to get the towel right now. We are so obsessed with the audit that we’ve forgotten how to use the towel.
The Final Question
Are we brave enough to admit our 77-slide decks are just bedtime stories?
If we stopped pretending we knew exactly what December would look like, how much more energy would we have to actually deal with what is happening in front of us right now?
NOW
The Time to Act