Everything is priority one
A list of fourteen strategic initiatives is not a strategy, it is a wish. When everything matters equally, sequencing is decided by whoever shouted most recently.
02 · Strategy & Execution
A plan is a cost until it is running.
Strategy documents are not scarce. Businesses still following one in month seven are. The difference is rarely the thinking. It is the cadence underneath it.
01 · The problem
Plans fail in the diary, not in the document.
Nobody abandons a strategy deliberately. It is displaced by a large order, a resignation or a systems outage, and each displacement is individually reasonable. Without a structure that survives an ordinary bad month, the plan quietly stops being the plan.
The plan has no owner
Initiatives assigned to a department rather than a person are assigned to nobody. Accountability that cannot be named at a board meeting does not exist.
The numbers were never attached
A plan without a financial case cannot be defended when budgets tighten, so it is the first thing cut, regardless of whether it was the right thing to cut.
The operating model cannot carry it
The strategy assumes a business that does not exist yet: different roles, different systems, different decision rights. Nobody costed the gap, so the gap is discovered in delivery.
02 · What you receive
Documents your team can run on.
Each output below is written to be used by somebody who was not in the room when it was made. That is a deliberately high bar, and it is the one that determines whether a plan survives.
03 · How it runs
Decide, then hold the cadence.
The planning half of this work is finite and usually takes about six weeks. The execution half is where the value is, and it has no natural end point, which is exactly why it needs a structure rather than enthusiasm.
- 01
Establish the position
Where the business genuinely stands, evidenced rather than asserted. This is the stage that most often changes what the plan turns out to be about.
- 02
Choose, and write down what you did not choose
Strategy is a set of refusals. We record the options rejected and why, so that when someone reopens one in nine months the reasoning is still available.
- 03
Sequence into ninety days
The plan becomes a quarter of owned work. Anything that cannot be started this quarter is parked explicitly rather than carried as unacknowledged debt.
- 04
Hold the review
Monthly, against the measures agreed at the outset. The plan is adjusted to what the data shows. Changing a plan on evidence is discipline, not failure.
04 · Is this the right service?
Five signs this is the work you need.
These are the conditions under which a planning and execution engagement tends to pay for itself quickly.
- There is a plan, and you could not name the person accountable for its third priority.
- Your leadership team would give materially different answers if asked what the business is trying to become.
- The business has grown past the point where the founder can hold every decision, and the structure has not caught up.
- A new market, product or channel is under discussion and the case for it has never been written down.
- Last year’s strategy day produced a document nobody has opened since.
05 · Questions
On strategy and execution specifically.
General questions about fees, timing and how engagements are scoped are answered on the frequently asked questions page.
Usually not. More often the strategy is sound and the execution structure underneath it is missing. We would rather test what exists and fix the gap than charge you for rediscovering conclusions you have already reached.
Some of it, yes, and that is a legitimate part of the value. People inside a business frequently know what is wrong and lack a forum in which saying it is safe. Part of our role is to put those observations in writing, attributed to us, so they can be discussed on their merits.
During the planning phase, roughly two to three hours a fortnight for each of your leadership team, plus one longer session. During execution it is deliberately lighter: a monthly review and whatever the owned work itself requires. We design around the fact that your people already have jobs.
Then it changes, and the monthly review exists to make that a decision rather than a drift. A plan that has never been revised in eighteen months is not evidence of discipline; it is usually evidence that nobody is checking it against reality.
We work alongside your team and will take specific pieces where you genuinely lack the capacity, including interim leadership through a transition. What we will not do is become a permanent dependency, because a plan only your adviser can run is not a plan you own.
06 · Start the conversation
Tell us what is actually holding the business back.
An introductory consultation is a straightforward conversation about your position and your priorities. No charge, no proposal deck, and no obligation to go further.
- What to expect
- Forty-five minutes with a senior adviser, followed by a short written summary of what we heard.
- What to bring
- Your last set of management accounts, if you have them. If you do not, that is already useful to know.
Vader Barclay ConsultingManagement · Accountancy · Marketing