Hi Reader,

Something fascinating is happening this July that I’ve never seen before in all of the years I’ve been involved in strategic planning.

I’ve started receiving a steady stream of requests for strategic planning support. During July. When usually most of the U.S. is on vacation (or at least, mentally checked out with some version of summer hours).

This isn’t “let’s prep for next year” planning, which usually starts to pick up in September. Instead, what I’m hearing is some version of:

A lot of organizations and operators spent the first half of 2025 in survival mode, reacting to economic and regulatory uncertainty that kicked in late last year. A lot of organizations have been operating in “just do something” mode—because activity feels like progress when you don’t know what’s actually strategic.

But all of a sudden, I’m hearing from future-seer strategic operators that their organizations need help right-tracking 2025.

Sometimes it’s a chief of staff, who can see the CEO’s concern about strategic achievement every day, but doesn’t know how to help. Sometimes it’s a strategy or ops lead who knows that any day now when the dashboard numbers don’t magically flip from red to green, they’re going to be the one the organization looks to for answers. And sometimes, it’s a forward-thinking people leader, or learning and development pro who can see the problems but doesn’t know what the solution is.

It’s those future-seer force multipliers I’m hearing from the most—folks in crux roles like chiefs of staff, heads of people or strategy, ops leaders. The ones who see the days of the calendar click by and realize we have just a few short months left to make 2025 count before we lose everyone’s focus to 2026 planning (and the winter holidays).

And that’s exactly why the Connected Strategic Stack matters more than ever.

Let’s get one thing out of the way. You’re probably here because of No-BS OKRs. And yes, I literally wrote a book on OKRs.

But OKRs aren’t always the right tool for the job right now. (Yes, really.)

Take my new nonprofit client who came to me wanting to build OKRs. As we worked to architect their kick-off, the less ready they felt for stretch goal-setting. What they may need more than OKRs right now is a preliminary Connected Strategic One-Pager that clarifies their current beliefs about their reason for being, strategic pillars, north star metric, topline metrics, and then objectives with milestones rather than stretch key results. That way, they can get to work, see what they learn, and then iterate and improve their strategy based on real-world testing—instead of spending more cycles trying to write "the right strategy" (which usually unfolds throughtesting and learning, not by "drafting harder" or longer).

Or my other client who went through the full rhythm of creating company-level OKRs, then realized: rather than build goals for growth and scale, what’s most important right now is building the operational foundation that makes growth and scale possible. So they went back to the drawing board, developed a single operational excellence objective with a few focused key results and their budget-based mandatories, and now their teams can align around that focus for the rest of the year... and be ready for growth when the market conditions enable it.

The Connected Strategic Stack gives you what most organizations desperately need right now: a way to make strategic decisions in real-time, regardless of how chaotic your operating environment.

It’s not strategy built a year ago or even two quarters ago that feels irrelevant to current reality. It’s a living wireframe that answers three critical questions:

1. What’s most important right now? (Clarity + Focus)
2. Why does it matter? (Shared purpose)
3. How will we know we’re making progress? (Objective indicators and success criteria)

Don’t give in to feeling like you can’t be strategic right now because of the chaos we're operating in. Spend 20-30 minutes creating a wireframe of your Connected Strategic One-Pager and see what that does for your decision-making.

What’s most important for you to focus on in what’s left of 2025?

Talk soon,

P.S. If you want to dive deeper into the Connected Strategic Framework, hit reply with "STACK" in the subject line. I have a new resource that's not publicly available yet that I'd love to share with you for your feedback, that shows the components of a stack, two example stacks, and provides a worksheet for you to get started with. Because sometimes the best strategic move is taking a step back to get clear on what actually matters most.

​*​

Want to opt out of marketing messages but stay on the newsletter list? I've got you.