Today’s Strategic Alignment Journal post in two sentences:
Having a clear plan can tell us where we are going without necessarily making it easier for us to take immediate action. When execution stalls, the question may not only be whether people are committed to the plan, but whether the work itself has been structured in a way that makes action possible.
I have been trying to declutter recently, and I have been reminded just how burdensome the process can become. I knew what needed to be done. I had made a list, organized the tasks and worked out what should happen first. On paper, there was no confusion about what needed to happen. And yet, I wasn’t getting through it.
For a while, I thought the missing ingredient was willpower.
I just needed to settle down, follow the plan and plow through. Except that wasn’t working.
What has begun to work is much less structured. I write down a few things in my journal, do one, cross it off and move to the next. Sometimes I add something that wasn’t on the original list. Sometimes I get less done than I intended. But slowly, the clutter is disappearing.
It made me think about an assumption we often make about planning: having a plan does not magically unlock action.
A plan solves one problem. Action presents another.
Planning is enormously useful. It can help us decide what matters, establish priorities, anticipate obstacles, allocate resources and determine what should happen next. When uncertainty is the problem, a good plan can create much-needed clarity.
But knowing what to do and doing it are not the same human activity. A plan can tell us that twelve things need to happen. It cannot necessarily make those twelve things feel manageable when we encounter them. In fact, there are times when seeing the entire plan can make the distance between where we are and where we need to be feel even larger.
The plan creates clarity but does not always motivate us to act.
Planning can feel remarkably close to progress
There is another complication. Planning involves activity. We research, organize, prioritize, build spreadsheets, create timelines, refine the sequence and rewrite the list. All of this may be necessary…but because we are doing something, it can be difficult to notice the point at which preparing to act has become a substitute for acting.
There is an important distinction between motion and action. Motion prepares us to produce a result. Action produces something that changes the situation. Researching how to declutter is motion; clearing the first drawer is action. Designing the project plan is motion; having the difficult conversation identified in the plan is action. Developing the customer strategy is motion; changing what happens when the next customer calls is action.
Both matter. But they are not interchangeable.
Perhaps the unit of action matters
What finally helped me was not a better master plan. It was making the amount of work I had to confront at any one time smaller. Instead of trying to declutter everything, I dealt with one thing, then another, crossed something off, and decided ‘what next’.
That seems almost too simple but perhaps there is something important in it. We tend to break work down because smaller tasks are easier to manage. But perhaps smaller units of action do something else as well: they reduce how much unfinished work we have to mentally confront at once.
The entire destination can remain visible without requiring us to carry the entire journey in every moment.
Beyond personal productivity
Organizations are very good at producing plans: strategic plans, transformation plans, implementation plans, project plans and action plans. And when execution stalls, the questions often turn quickly to accountability. Who owns this? Why hasn’t it happened? Do people understand the priorities? Are they sufficiently committed? Does someone need to drive this harder?
Those may be legitimate questions. But there is another one worth asking:
Have we made the work executable from where people actually stand?
A plan can be strategically sound and still be difficult to translate into action. Perhaps the next step is too large. Perhaps too many priorities remain active simultaneously. Perhaps the people responsible for execution have to make too many additional decisions before they can begin. Perhaps the plan describes what must ultimately be achieved without making the immediate point of entry sufficiently clear.
If so, asking for more discipline may not solve the problem.
Clarity has to survive contact with action
I still believe in planning. My list wasn’t useless. It helped me see the whole. But seeing the whole and moving through it turned out to require different things.
That distinction may be useful whenever a well-considered plan seems unable to generate the movement we expected. Before concluding that people lack commitment, discipline or willpower, we might examine the distance between the plan and the next executable action.
Sometimes the problem isn’t that we don’t know where we’re going…it’s that we are simply trying to do too much, too fast, in one go.
Strategic Reflection Prompt:
Where might a lack of progress in your work be less about commitment or discipline and more about how the work has been structured for action?
About Giselle
Most costly decisions begin with a wrong read of the situation.
I’m Giselle Hudson — The Pre-Fixer. I help leaders see the real problem before they act, in my writing and in my work. I don’t fix; I pre-fix. Most advisers jump to solutions before they’ve found the real problem. I find it first — the part that isn’t fully visible yet. Once we see that clearly, everything else falls into place, and confident, right action can follow.
Through my daily Strategic Alignment Journal, I explore leadership, decision-making, and the patterns that shape organizations — helping leaders make sense of complexity before they commit significant time and money to the wrong thing.
What’s the one thing about your business that frustrates you most — the thing that, despite your best efforts, you can’t seem to resolve?
