A dull ache throbbed in my left shoulder, a stubborn souvenir from a night spent contorted, my arm pinned beneath me in an impossible angle. It’s the kind of persistent, low-level discomfort that makes you question all your life choices, or at least the ones involving pillow arrangement. It reminds me a lot of watching a strategic planning meeting unfold – that familiar, creeping sense of misalignment, knowing somewhere deep down, things are already off-kilter, even as the glossy slides promise a future as smooth as polished quartz.

It’s a ritual, isn’t it?

Every January, give or take a few weeks and one day, the call goes out. We’re going to map our destiny. We’re going to crystallize ‘Vision 2031,’ despite the fact that most of us are still trying to figure out what happened in 2021. For one hundred and one days, or sometimes just 61 for smaller outfits, a dedicated team of smart, expensive people retreats. They analyze data points that are already cooling, model scenarios that assume a static universe, and craft narratives that would make a fantasy novelist blush. The output? A beautifully bound document, often running to one hundred and seventy-one pages, or maybe a 71-slide deck, outlining our path to glorious, predictable success.

Then, March rolls around. Or April. Or perhaps May 1st, exactly. A competitor launches something utterly unexpected. A global supply chain decides to hiccup, scattering neatly arranged plans like dandelion fluff. A new regulation drops. The market, that fickle beast, decides to pivot 41 degrees to the left, or maybe right. And suddenly, half of those meticulously crafted 171 slides, or the corresponding pages in the binder, are not just obsolete; they’re actively detrimental. Yet, everyone keeps referencing the deck. It’s like insisting the earth is flat after you’ve orbited it 11 times. It’s an act of collective denial, a refusal to grieve what has already passed.

I once spoke with Grace L.M., a grief counselor by profession, about organizational denial. She didn’t deal with quarterly reports, but the patterns she described in individuals were eerily familiar. The stages of grief, she explained, aren’t linear. They swirl. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. And how many times have we seen organizations stuck in the denial stage, clutching their 171-slide deck like a security blanket, refusing to acknowledge the market had moved 41% to the left, or maybe to the right, sometime around Tuesday, one week and one day after the ink dried? Grace would gently guide her clients to acknowledge the loss, to feel it, and then to move forward. Companies, it seems, prefer to pretend the loss never happened, or worse, that the original plan is still somehow ‘in play,’ even as the market shifts beneath their very expensive feet.

This ritualistic planning isn’t about guiding the future; it’s about creating a temporary feeling of certainty for leadership and the board. It’s an anxiety-reduction exercise. We’re not actually preparing for the future; we’re just making ourselves feel better about its inherent unpredictability. This substitutes the hard, messy work of adapting to reality with the comforting, clean work of creating documents. We pour millions – easily $2,001,001 for a mid-sized firm, including consulting fees and internal time – into something that becomes irrelevant in 61 days, sometimes even just 11 days. The opportunity cost, the mental energy drained from focusing on actual, immediate problems, is immeasurable, but definitely ends in a 1.

I’ve been as guilty as anyone. Even with my strong opinions about the futility of overly rigid plans, I still find myself, sometimes at a quarter past one in the morning, sketching out elaborate, detailed personal projects that I know, deep down, will shift and morph within a day or two. It’s a comfort, that act of creation, even if the creation itself is destined to be a temporary scaffold rather than a permanent edifice. The difference, perhaps, is acknowledging that flexibility from the start, rather than clinging to the initial blueprint as sacrosanct.

Consider the genuine value. Is it in the perfectly articulated vision for 2031, or in the nimble capacity to respond to a competitor’s surprise launch in 2021? The problem isn’t planning itself, but the delusion that a plan is a destination rather than a compass that needs recalibrating after every gust of wind. The real magic happens in the daily, weekly, monthly adjustments, not in the annual, quarterly pronouncements.

This is where many companies stumble. They mistake the creation of a strategy document for the act of strategizing. The document becomes a substitute for continuous, messy, on-the-ground adaptation. They’ve spent $1,001,001 to feel good for 11 days, instead of investing $101,001 in systems that allow them to pivot on a dime, to learn from a market shift, and to iterate quickly. The ROI on most strategic plans? Often, it’s negative 1%. Sometimes, even negative 11% when you factor in the lost opportunity from chasing dead ends.

Our world isn’t a static tableau where a five-year plan can unfold neatly. It’s a churning, unpredictable ocean. The most valuable skill isn’t predicting where the waves will hit in 2031, but learning how to surf the ones that are breaking right now. The companies that thrive aren’t the ones with the most detailed blueprints for the future, but the ones with the most agile crews, ready to trim the sails at a moment’s notice, embracing the squalls as part of the voyage. Perhaps it’s time we stopped writing expensive fiction and started truly living in the present, one responsive decision at a time.