Follow these three principles when putting together a strategic plan for your organization.
What is a strategic plan and why is it important? A strategic plan defines what your organization stands for. It assesses the market where you compete and determines how you compete in that market. It’s the definition of the goals you’re going to pursue and more importantly, the initiatives you’re going to execute to achieve those goals. The process will determine how to allocate your very limited resources to pursue those initiatives and reach those goals.
Why is a strategic plan so important? First, it provides focus for your efforts and your limited investments. Next, it gives your team something to rally around and be excited about. And last, it identifies the risks and opportunities you’re going to face in the market, which enables you to plan for those risks or exploit those opportunities.
There are three principles of strategic planning that you should follow.
1. Set a clear direction
First, set a clear direction and stay in your lane versus meandering and pursuing strategies that change every year.
2. Say no to distractions
Second, say no to distractions. It’s easy to get caught up in the, wow, that looks like a cool initiative. Let’s pursue that. But a good plan keeps you focused.
3. Diversify your bets
The third is making sure you diversify your bets. You have limited pools of money and people and time. shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket. You should instead pursue initiatives that are spread across different time horizons, different markets, different products.
If you follow these three principles of strategic planning, you’re going to have a clear direction that you’re able to follow over time and drive achievement of your goals.
Want to learn more about strategic planning foundations? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to create strategic plans. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!
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Self-awareness is a huge perk of being human. Unfortunately, it can also lead to chronic illness.
Today’s post is by Steve Adams, CEO of Tiger Performance Institute and author of Unleash the Peak Performer Within You.
Zebras are horse-like creatures with beautifully striped coats that fascinate children and adults alike. Zebras have a distinct advantage over humans in one particularly important area of life: how they manage stress. To understand this phenomenon, we need to begin with the concept of interference. In my book, Unleash the Peak Performer Within You, I share the Performance Formula.Simply stated, it reads:
Performance = Skill – Interference
What is Interference?
Interference is a term representing anything that prevents your skills from taking over to produce a high level of productivity and performance. A short list of potential interference includes anxiety, ADD, emotional control problems, and poor sleep. There are many more sources of interference, and they all get in the way of good performance. Eliminating or reducing your interference represents a direct path to improved performance.
As you begin the journey of learning how to reduce interference and change your health trajectory, understanding and strengthening your autonomic nervous system is vital.
The Autonomic Nervous System
What is the autonomic nervous system (ANS)? The ANS is a branch of your nervous system that regulates involuntary functions and is constantly assessing the environment around you and sending information to the brain. This ongoing process keeps you healthy and safe and goes unnoticed as you go about your day. Its goal is to balance your body to its environment.
Functions such as heart rate, salivary secretions, eye dilation, digestion, and adrenaline release are governed by your ANS.
Your ANS has two branches, each at one extreme of functioning. These branches are called parasympathetic (rest and digest) and sympathetic (fright, fight, or flight).
An example from animals is in order…
Stress Responses: Humans vs. Animals
When a zebra is being chased by a lion, its blood flow concentrates to core life-sustaining organs. Digestion slows and heart rate increases. When you face a stressful situation, your body will do the same thing.
Once a zebra has eluded the lion, it returns to a “rest and digest” state or parasympathetic response. This is when the body returns to balance with its environment.
Animals are always one-to-one with their environment. This is where the difference between humans and animals becomes evident. Animals live on instinct. We are different; we are capable of conscious thought.
When you experience stress, your sympathetic branch of the ANS is activated. It’s what’s commonly referred to as a “fight-or-flight” response. It’s okay when a mortal danger presents itself. It’s not okay when you chronically respond to everyday life this way.
In fact, when you unproductively manage stress in this way, it leads to common and preventable disease such as type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and high blood pressure to name a few.
Because we are self-aware and have the power of creating theater of the mind, humans can and do ruminate about past events and worry about future concerns. We can literally invent stress in our minds by looking back or ahead.
The fascinating thing about this is that your body doesn’t differentiate between real events playing out in front of you, such as a stranger threatening you, and an event playing out in your mind. Either way, you end up with a stress response. When the conversations you are having with yourself are chronically stressful, you are putting yourself into chronic stress.
The research is settled: chronic stress and chronic debilitating disease are highly correlated. Learning to manage stress properly is one thing you can do to significantly improve your health today and tomorrow.
So now you know why zebras don’t get ulcers, but people do! Our habit of unwittingly placing ourselves in a state where our bodies think a lion is chasing us drives a cascade of reactions in our brains and bodies that make us physically and mentally sick. Our ability to perform at a high level is then severely compromised.
Chronic stress, and all its negative consequences, represents serious interference. Learning to manage stress well will reduce your interference and improve your performance.
How to Reduce Interference
Strategies to improve your autonomic nervous system balance include heart rate variability training, deep diaphragm breathing, optimizing sleep, daily movement, and practicing gratitude. Additionally, learning how to properly process thoughts and not hang onto them, leading to endless ruminations, is key.
The next best step is to assess imbalances in your autonomic nervous system, then seek training from a qualified organization and provider to help you regain control. The goal is to become your own best coach and learn to self-regulate your responses to life’s events. In doing so, your nervous system will then work for you rather than against you. When it does, you will live healthier and become a peak performer based on your definition of success and performance!
Steve L. Adams, MBA is the author of Unleash the Peak Performer Within You and founder and CEO of Tiger Performance Institute. His passion lies in helping high-achieving entrepreneurs, professionals, and CEOs achieve sustainable peak performance through his innovative, hyper-personalized, precision health optimization system and performance training. You can check out Adams here at www.steveladams.com, and learn more about his training programs at www.tigerpi.com.
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Our reader poll today asks: How much pressure and stress are you feeling as a leader right now?
Extreme — I’m at a breaking point – 16%
Significant — Much more than I’m used to – 39%
Some — Things are at a normal stress level – 33%
Mild — There’s minor stress but nothing substantial – 8%
None — Things are as peaceful as ever – 4%
Stressful times. Almost 55% of you report feeling excessive stress right now. Your teams are likely feeling even more of it because they can sense your stress too and if the boss is stressed, it’s another source of stress for team members. Please take care of yourself. Chronic stress and burnout are cumulative. Take your vacation days. Work will always be there when you get back. Don’t let a sense of loyalty to your company drive dysfunctional behavior like excessive hours, weekend work, and sacrificing beyond what you’re paid to do. Loyalty matters to the company until it’s time for a layoff and the company suddenly becomes cold and heartless. If you don’t take care of yourself, no one else will. As leaders, it’s even more important to manage your stress so you’re not adding to team member stress as well.
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Avoid these pitfalls to get your recommendations implemented.
For you to get good at your problem solving, you need to apply this method to problems you’re working on. And I know it’s going to feel awkward, I’ve asked you to slow down, I’ve added steps to your process. But if you do, you’re going to be much more likely to solve for the root cause. You can’t skip these early steps of the process. And the more you apply the method, the more comfortable you’re going to be with it, the faster it’s going to go, and the more effective it will be in your problem solving.
Pitfall 1: Not Pinning Your Problem
Now, there are some major pitfalls out there. The first is in that pinning the problem step. People want to rush right past it, and I personally have a bias towards rushing past it. I have to remind myself to stop and be disciplined about answering all of the questions and writing a really well-scoped problem statement. Because candidly, the times I haven’t, I’ve regretted it. I’ve regretted it because as I would go through the problem solving, I would uncover things that I would have found out much earlier if I had been disciplined about pinning the problem.
Pitfall 2: Analysis-Paralysis
The second pitfall is analysis-paralysis. We all like Excel. I like getting in there, making the graphs, the pivot tables, and the charts. It’s fun. You get the numbers to add, and it looks really interesting. The problem is, you’re not pulling back up to that higher level and saying, “Have I learned anything from all this analysis? Does the problem still make sense? Is my best guess still my best guess?” And if you do that and you do it regularly and effectively, again, you’re going to waste a lot less time on junk analysis, and more time on solving the actual problem.
Pitfall 3: Stakeholder Resistance
The third thing you’re going to run into–and this is one that I have a really hard time with–is those stakeholders who are resistant to your idea. They’re going to put up the roadblocks, and say, “We don’t want to change,” or “We don’t have the resources,” or “That’s a bad idea.” You’re going to face lot of resistance with your recommendations even if it’s right, even if everybody knows it’s right. Some people are still going to resist, and it can be really frustrating. The key to overcoming that resistance is having a really solid set of facts that you’re going to base your assertions and your recommendations on. So, understand those stakeholders, understand why they’re pushing back on you and what their point of resistance is, and then you can make sure you’re bringing the right facts to the table to get them past that and get your recommendation implemented.
If you can avoid these pitfalls and overcome that resistance, you’re going to be really likely to get your recommendations approved by those stakeholders and implemented to improve your business.
Want to learn more about solving business problems? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to solve business problems. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!
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Our reader poll today asks: When your company is having a tough year, how do you approach it?
We take urgent action and double our efforts to turn the year around – 65%
We stay the course and hope things improve – 29%
We give up and say, “Oh well, tough years happen. Next year will be better” – 6%
Push harder. That’s what most of you report your company does when facing a difficult year – you push harder to turn things around. While that’s a good short-term course of action in many instances, you must remain mindful of long-term impacts. Cutting costs, conducting layoffs, and pushing people to work harder and longer can have immediate financial impact. Unfortunately, those approaches aren’t sustainable and can cause long-term problems. Burnout, attrition, and damage to your brand as an employer can create bigger problems down the road. Whatever actions you take to turn your year around, be mindful and ask the question about how these short-term actions will affect your long-term prospects.
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No matter how good your problem solving is, if you can’t come up with a clear recommendation that’s compelling to your stakeholders, it’s all been for naught.
The last step in the problem solving process is coming up with a clear and concise recommendation.
I like to say you need to make assertions. Assertions are nothing more than facts stated to persuade. Now I’ve used this method of making assertions with a project where it was a $4 million telecom replacement where we were going to replace all of the phone systems across our entire division and it was going to cost $4 million. That’s what I was going to the stakeholders asking for. And I needed to make my case, so I put together my set of facts and my set of assertions to make that case and was successful in doing so. And you can do the same thing.
Now, with assertions, you’re going to run into resistance and your task is to overcome that resistance. The key to getting your idea supported is having the right set of facts and articulating them in a manner that’s going to be compelling to your audience. So, the most common types of resistance you’re going to hear, and I bet you’ve heard some of these things already in your past experience.
You may hear, “Well, that’ll never work.”
Well, bring assertions and facts that show it has worked somewhere else, perhaps in a different business unit or even one of your competitors.
You may hear, “Well it’s too expensive.”
The assertions you need to bring to table are ones around the cost benefit analysis of making your recommendation.
You may find somebody says, “Well, our customers won’t buy it.”
And you can build assertions and facts to support it by going and surveying customers or doing a small pilot in the market and gathering data from that.
Sometimes you’ll hear, “Well, we don’t like any of the options that you’ve presented.”
That’s my personal favorite, and that one feels like it’s really hard to overcome. The easiest way to overcome it is to show them the cost of doing nothing. Show them the cost of letting your competitors continue to penetrate the market while you sit there on your hands. It can be a very compelling set of facts to pull together.
So as you’re thinking about your assertions and your recommendations, I want you to think about the recommendation you’re trying to make, what the right set of facts are that you need to pull together to compel your audience. I want you to think of some of these types of resistance you’re going to encounter and how you’re going to overcome it because there’s always a counterpoint to every point they’re going to make.
The real trick is making sure that you have the right of facts and a powerful assertion to overcome that resistance in front of you.
Want to learn more about solving business problems? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to solve business problems. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!
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When everything feels urgent, nothing gets done, and your team pays the price.
Today’s post is by Liane Davey, PhD, organizational psychologist and New York Times bestselling author.
The following is an excerpt from the title Thoughtload: Manage The Madness and Free Your Team To Do Great Work by Liane Davey, PhD.
A leader I worked with, let’s call her Rebecca, was struggling profoundly with prioritization. She was smart and ambitious, but that made the task of winnowing down activities difficult because she could make a compelling case for why every investment mattered. As a result, her team was stretched across multiple priorities and working nonstop with no results to show for it. Everyone but Rebecca could see that they needed to do fewer things at once: to focus, get traction, work to completion, then move on to the next priority.
For months, this was the crux of our coaching conversations. But each time we made progress by deleting, delaying, or de-scoping an initiative, one of her team members would call me afterward to ask if I was aware that Rebecca had added multiple initiatives since our last session. I would broach the issue with Rebecca and remind her that her job was to help the team make the hard trade-offs and focus on a small set of the most valuable actions; doing one or two things at a time and then moving on to the next would be much more productive than trying to do everything at once. To her credit, she took the message to heart and stopped adding initiatives. Unfortunately, her compulsion to do more led her to start hiding three projects under one initiative heading, like a mom hiding vegetables in the lasagna. To be fair, I don’t think she even realized she was doing it.
At some point, the dilution of the team’s resources across so many activities meant nothing worked, and the situation reached a breaking point where Rebecca’s job was on the line. Only then did she switch into crisis mode and pick one initiative that would save the team. If they could resolve an urgent supply chain issue, they would solve a lot of problems for the company and rehabilitate their image. The supply chain project became the first and only priority. A couple of team members kept the lights on, but everyone else worked tirelessly to implement the project. It became nonnegotiable. Anything anyone needed to progress became top priority for everyone. I’ve never seen her team more productive, more ingenious, or more energized. What they accomplished in six weeks would have taken them at least a year in their former diluted and distracted state. Even two years later, when new challenges emerged, someone would often mention the supply chain project as an example of what was possible when they were all aligned on one clear priority. I won’t say that Rebecca is cured of her pernicious predilection for piling priorities, but now she knows that it’s an issue she needs to continually manage.
Being a manager is a big responsibility, at least if you care about being a good one. For your employees, you are the key connection to the organization and the primary source of intel on what belongs in their thoughtload: what is important, what is legitimately worrisome, and what is worth the effort. If you abdicate that role, your team members’ thoughtload will run rampant, as it did in Rebecca’s team. However, if you embrace your role in helping your employees direct their attention, process their emotions, and use their energy wisely, you have the opportunity to not only reduce their thoughtload but also increase their productivity and decrease their stress. Said more directly, you have the chance to transform the experience of work for your team.
Liane Davey has spent more than 25 years researching and advising teams on how to perform at their best. Known as the “teamwork doctor,” she works with teams from the frontlines to the boardroom, across industries and around the world, from Boston to Bangkok. Through her work with hundreds of teams, including 26 Global Fortune 500 companies (and counting), she has developed a practical, research-backed approach to solving the challenges that prevent teams from working effectively together. She is also the author of Thoughtload: Manage the Madness and Free Your Team to Do Great Work, which tackles today’s most pressing management challenges: over-burdened systems, burned-out teams, and plateauing results.
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Our reader poll today asks: Would you rather work for a large company or for a small entrepreneurial venture?
I prefer large companies – 42%
I prefer entrepreneurial environments – 58%
Entrepreneurial Preference. There’s a clear preference people have for entrepreneurial environments. If you’re a leader at a big company, don’t worry – this doesn’t mean you’re facing an exodus to small companies. It’s actually an opportunity. How can you create a more entrepreneurial environment for your team? Can you relax oversight? Reduce paperwork and administrative work? Can you give people more freedom to operate? Granted, all these actions require some level of risk-taking on your part. That said, your people might surprise you with what they deliver when they have more time and freedom. Stepping back and giving them space can make the environment feel more entrepreneurial but not with the associated risk of working for a small company. If you’re one of those respondents wishing for a more entrepreneurial environment, be careful what you ask for. Leaving a large company carries significant risks and inherent instability. That said, you’ll have more control over the work you do and less bureaucracy to deal with.
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Big problems can be easier to solve when you break them into smaller problems.
At one point, I worked with a financial services firm and we had a program where we were making offers to consumers. And when that program first launched, we were making about $5 million a year. The problem was, after a few months, we started losing $5 million a year. So this was a huge issue, and there were a lot of things that could contribute to it.
So we used the problem-solving process to get a better understanding of what issues were really driving the problem before we rushed off to solve it. We broke it down into what’s called a logic map. We looked at technology, we looked at training, we looked at systems, we looked at hiring, we looked at processes. Now, the good news is, once we broke the problem down, we identified the core issue, followed the rest of the problem-solving process and turned that program around from losing $5 million a year to actually making $20 million a year a few years after that.
So let me walk you through what a logic map is and how you can use it to breakdown your own problem solving. Let’s imagine we have a problem where profits are down. So, in the logic map, what we’re going to do is take profits and break it down into its component parts of revenue and cost. And by doing so, what we’ve done is taken a larger problem and broken it down smaller.
But those are still large issues to try and solve, so let’s use the logic map to break it down further. We’ll break revenues down into volume and price and further break down our volume into current customers and prospective customers. And by doing so, we’ve taken a really large item that we wouldn’t be able to solve easily and broken it down into smaller parts that are going to be much easier to figure out.
Now, you need to make your logic map complete. You can’t just stop there because we want to identify what all the possible issues are. So we need to look at the cost side of things. In terms of costs, maybe we’re buying more or we’re paying more for the things that we’re buying. And in terms of paying more, potentially that’s an issue where we’re getting fewer discounts or base prices have gone up. So, by breaking that logic map down and saying we had a profit issue, and really walking it all the way through the smaller and smaller components, the problem gets a lot easier to solve.
Now, there are multiple ways that you can break your logic maps down. It’s not always about revenues and costs. Sometimes you’ll break it down and it’s a sales problem. We have product A, B and C and that may be the first level of your logic map. Or you may break things in terms of short-term, medium-term and long-term challenges. There are going to be multiple ways that you can break your logic map down, and as it’s called, just break it down logically. Blow it out to a level where you can start seeing some of the smaller solutions emerge.
So, what I’d like you to do is take your personal problem, your personal challenge, take that pinned problem statement that you generated in the first step, and then generate a logic map that starts identifying what all the issues are that are contributing to your particular problem.
Want to learn more about solving business problems? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to solve business problems. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!
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Our reader poll today asks: What’s the most exciting part of your role as a leader?
Helping a team member grow and reach the next level – 34%
Bringing the team together to accomplish a major goal – 36%
Guiding team members through challenging times – 13%
Setting strategy and direction for the organization – 14%
Something else – 3%
Goals and Growth. Most of you find helping team members grow and achieve team goals as the most satisfying and exciting elements of your role as a leader. It’s encouraging to see so many of you derive satisfaction from helping others achieve. Whether that achievement is of an individual nature like someone getting promoted or of a team nature like hitting your goals for the year, there’s something fulfilling about those achievements. The great thing about that mindset is once you get everyone on your team promoted, your leaders have no choice but to promote you as well and move you into roles of greater impact and responsibility. I had a great leader who taught me that the best way to get promoted is to get everyone that worked for me to the next level. By focusing deeper into your organization (rather than focusing on yourself) you’ll find your team members will push you up to your next level of achievement.
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Your actions are always being watched. A leadership lesson on how small daily decisions shape trust, reputation, and future opportunities.
Today’s post is by Ryan A. Cherry, Colonel, USMC (Ret.), and author of READBACK: A Marine Aviator’s Manual For Navigating Life’s Hardest Lessons.
It’s easy to believe no one is paying attention, that you and your actions have faded into the background of daily life.
You go about your day, checking boxes, handling emails, moving from one task to the next. You assume that as long as nothing goes wrong, you’re doing just fine. Invisible, even.
Throughout my career, I learned that this assumption is completely wrong – both through my own experiences and by watching others.
Early in my career as a Marine aviator, I found myself in roles where I thought performance was judged only on the big moments. Flights. Missions. High-visibility tasks. I believed those were the moments that mattered most.
But that wasn’t true.
In reality, I was constantly being evaluated – long before I stepped up to the briefing podium or climbed into the cockpit.
My leaders were watching how I prepared. My peers were watching how I treated them. My subordinates were watching how I handled stress, frustration, and responsibility. What I thought were small, insignificant moments were actually shaping how people viewed me – and whether they trusted me.
The shift, my understanding, didn’t happen overnight. It came from a growing realization: opportunities weren’t random. They were quietly assigned based on patterns of behavior others observed every day.
Who gets the next leadership role?
Who is trusted with more responsibility?
Who is recommended for advancement?
Who will trust you in their most difficult moments?
It’s rarely decided in a single moment. It’s decided over time, by people watching more closely than you think.
And they’re not just watching what you do when things are going well.
They’re watching how you act when you’re frustrated. When you’re tired. When something doesn’t go your way. When no one is giving you direct credit.
Those moments define you, sometimes far more than the ones where you’re performing under a spotlight.
Your peers are watching to decide if they can rely on you. Not just professionally, but personally. Are you someone they trust when things get difficult? Are you someone they want on their team?
Your subordinates are watching to understand what kind of leader you are. Do you put the team first, or yourself? Do you take responsibility, or shift blame? Do you treat people with respect when there’s nothing to gain?
And your leaders are watching to answer one simple question: Can this person be trusted with more responsibility?
Here’s the part most people miss.
You don’t get to choose when you’re being evaluated.
You don’t get a warning before someone decides whether you’re ready for the next opportunity. There’s no announcement that says, “This moment matters.”
They all matter.
That doesn’t mean you need to live in fear of being watched. It means you should see it for what it really is – an opportunity.
Every interaction is a chance to build trust.
Every decision is a chance to reinforce your reputation.
Every small action is a vote for the kind of leader you are becoming.
The people who accelerate in any organization understand this. They don’t wait for big moments to perform. They treat the routine, the mundane, and the unnoticed tasks with the same level of discipline and professionalism as the high-stakes ones.
Because they know something others don’t.
Consistency is what people remember.
Not perfection. Not one standout performance. But a steady pattern of doing the right thing, at the right time, for the right reasons.
If you want to apply this immediately, start with one simple shift.
Assume that everything you do is being observed – and more importantly, interpreted.
Before you act, ask yourself:
If someone used this moment as an example of who I am, would I be proud of it?
That question has a way of sharpening your decisions.
It changes how you respond to frustration.
It changes how you treat people when there’s no upside.
It changes how seriously you take the small things.
And over time, it changes how others see you.
Because whether you realize it or not, you are already being watched.
The only question is what they’re learning from you.
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https://i0.wp.com/www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/20260503-Brown-Eye.jpg?fit=1920%2C1280&ssl=112801920Trevor Joneshttps://www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/logo.pngTrevor Jones2026-05-04 08:02:162026-05-03 23:35:42You’re Always Being Watched: A Simple Truth Many People Miss
Our reader poll today asks: If a team member isn’t happy with their career trajectory and opportunities, how do you prefer they handle it?
Come directly to you for a face-to-face discussion – 79%
Go to HR or a mentor for a discussion – 9%
Send you an email laying out their case for you to consider – 6%
Seek better opportunities on their own – 5%
Stay quiet and just do their job – 2%
Talk to a manager. There’s obviously a strong preference among respondents that team members come directly to them for a conversation when the individual is unhappy with their career trajectory or opportunities. These can be uncomfortable situations and, as a leader, your role is to make sure people know they can and should come to you. You also need to make it a comfortable discussion. As soon as you say “well, that’s just the way it is” that person will never come to you again, nor will their colleagues. Be inquisitive. Seek to understand their source of frustration, their hopes and expectations, and what they want for their career. You might be able to guide them to non-traditional or interesting opportunities they (and you) hadn’t considered before. To make this process even easier, try proactively reaching out to your team members to have these discussions. That can remove the fear they might have of coming to you directly and it could put you in a more open mindset to consider opportunities for them.
Did you enjoy this post? If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog. It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!). SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!
https://i0.wp.com/www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/20140203-EKG-Pulse-Graph-with-Glowing-Blue-Line-Narrow.jpg?fit=833%2C258&ssl=1258833Trevor Joneshttps://www.thoughtleadersllc.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/logo.pngTrevor Jones2026-04-30 13:00:372026-04-21 23:50:24If a team member isn’t happy with their career trajectory and opportunities, how do you prefer they handle it?
