The Pitfalls of Putting Your Strategy on a Pedestal
May 22, 2025 | By David M. Wagner
A podcast episode about romanticizing the people, experiences, and relationships in our lives recently got me thinking:
How often do organizations put their strategies on a pedestal?
In other words, how often do we don our rose-colored glasses and imagine our long-term plans are in better shape than they really are?
Strategies often fail at one of three stages: creating a vision, formulating plans, or carrying out those plans. Romanticizing strategy can create a rosier-than-reality perception that undermines our plans in each phase.
Set a Bold (but not Impossible) Vision
I’m an advocate for setting a bold vision for your organization.
Bold visions inspire support, stimulate tough (and necessary) conversations, and drive your organization to achieve more.
But what happens if we aim too high and dream up a grand – and unachievable – vision?
If your vision for the future feels like a dream, that might be all it will ever become.
Going too far with vision will just frustrate your team and your supporters and derail any attempts at realistic planning, ironically leading to accomplishing even less.
Avoid undercutting your strategy. Set a vision that is aggressive and challenging without being impossible.
Use Planning to Prioritize
Strategy helps you decide what not to do as much as what new initiatives to pursue.
If your “plans” read like a wish list, that’s all it is.
Look for these red flags:
All your initiatives are planned to complete in the first half of your planning horizon (e.g., in the first year of a 5-year plan).
There’s little or no mention of the good things that are working that you’ll continue doing.
There’s no budget or estimate of resources required attached to your plan.
Each of these is a recipe for team burnout.
Build realism into your plans by building experience-based estimates of the time and money required for initiatives, then set priorities that align those initiatives with your organization’s capacity.
Keep Tabs on Reality
Strategy does not end at planning – it requires execution.
Even the best resource-weighted, realistic plan isn’t likely to continue unscathed forever.
If you have only a vague sense that things are “going well” with your strategy implementation, you may be overlooking:
The impact of your plan on key outcomes
Gaps in your project management (detailed planning, reporting, and adjusting)
Keep an accurate eye on execution and stay responsive by adjusting goals, initiatives, and project plans as needed.
The pitfall of putting your strategy on a pedestal: an unachievable vision, an over-ambitious plan, and an inflated sense of progress. Balance ambition and optimism with some grounding in reality to stretch your organization without breaking it.
Need a hand with crafting vision, making plans, or building the capacity to implement your strategy? Talk with me about my facilitated approach to strategic planning can help with all three.