Advanced Planning
Clarifying Direction When the Path Isn’t Obvious
Used when decisions matter, stakes are high, and conventional strategy isn’t enough.
This is not traditional strategic planning. It’s used when leaders need clarity in situations where direction isn’t obvious and time matters.
"An excellent strategy, even if it's executed poorly,
is still better than a poor strategy executed well."
How complex decisions get clarified when conventional strategy stops working.
This didn’t come from theory.
It came from working directly with decision makers facing real consequences.
In the earliest years of my career as a businessperson, I was puzzled and frustrated over why my and my colleagues' plans so often missed their mark, sometimes by only by a nose. Other times, I realized that leaders' best strategic and tactical options weren't even being taken into consideration.
I was determined to find out why.
Advanced Planning is used by leaders responsible for decisions that can’t afford to be wrong.
Senior leaders making decisions where:
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the stakes are high
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the variables are unclear
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and conventional approaches aren’t working
Used across business, government, and organizations where direction matters more than activity.
What Changes
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Decisions get clearer, faster
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Gaps between strategy and execution become visible
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Leadership alignment improves under pressure
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Complexity becomes actionable
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Direction replaces activity
What Leaders Experience
What this looks like in practice
“When we first started working with David, I was skeptical. Another member of our executive board had heard him speak and then hired him to work with our leadership team to help us develop our 5-year strategic plan. I thought, ‘How can this industry outsider be knowledgeable enough about our company and industry to deliver for us?’ To compound my skepticism once we started the project, I had never experienced an approach like his from any other consultant I had worked with over the 27 years of my career.
By week three, I had become a believer. David’s non-traditional approach, his side-by-side methodology, and his innate ability to sense what each exec member needed from him to push progress forward was transforming each of us to become best versions of ourselves and was producing results faster than any of us had ever seen before.
The initial project was for three months, but we recognized that David’s understanding of leadership, markets, and industries could help us in a variety of ways. We more or less developed an intimate working relationship with him over the course of three years during which he helped us prioritize, plan, and execute on major projects that not only revived our company but prepared us to face an oncoming recession from a position of strength. Because of our work with David, we drastically improved the customers’ experience, defined and elevated our brand, developed a culture of innovation throughout our organization, and became much more proactive and forward thinking as a result of our strengthened abilities to strategize and forecast.
What I would say about working with David is this: Be willing to open your mind to new ways of thinking and approaching challenges, and have faith that his innovative approaches will produce rapid results and make previously invisible opportunities visible.
My skepticism has changed; if not for David’s work with our executive board, I am skeptical whether our company, which is a market leader in the Asia Pacific region, would even be in business today.”
-Name withheld due to NDA