Why Your Company Needs a Strategic Council

Future success requires evolving your business—not just improving your current one. Here are four ways to stay focused on strategy.

As a former CEO who scaled a company to the Inc. 500 list multiple times and successfully executed an exit, I’ve experienced firsthand the challenge of balancing strategic vision with operational excellence. Now, having coached dozens of growth-stage company leaders facing this exact challenge, I’ve learned that the most successful companies don’t choose between strategic and operational planning—they systematically excel at both by creating distinct processes, teams, and focus areas for each type of planning.

1. Define strategic versus operational planning

Strategic planning is about changing and evolving your business to create differentiated value in the marketplace. It focuses on external insights around customers, competitors, and market positioning to identify where your company can establish unique advantages that competitors cannot easily replicate. Strategic planning asks fundamental questions: How do we position ourselves differently? What capabilities do we need to build? Where are the emerging opportunities in our market? What trends will reshape our industry over the next three to five years?

Operational planning is about running and improving your current business through continuous improvement, quality enhancement, and standardization of processes and delivery systems. It focuses on internal processes, delivery systems, and efficiency optimization to maximize value creation while minimizing waste and variability. Operational planning asks practical questions: How do we deliver more consistently? Where can we eliminate waste and redundancy? How do we improve quality and reduce costs? What systems need strengthening to support growth?

Every successful company needs both. If you focus only on strategy, you’ll never develop the operational discipline to deliver effectively on your vision. If you focus only on operations, you’ll optimize your way to irrelevance as markets shift and competitors innovate around you.

2. Establish a strategic council structure

The most effective approach I’ve implemented with clients is establishing a Strategic Council—a small group of senior leaders specifically tasked with developing and articulating strategy, separate from the management team focused on execution and operational efficiency.

Your Strategic Council should include the CEO plus two to three other senior leaders who bring different perspectives and expertise to strategic discussions. This group should meet at least every other week to review new market insights, customer feedback, competitive intelligence, and industry trends, then consider what impact this information has on your strategic positioning and planning decisions. Regular cadence ensures strategic thinking doesn’t get overwhelmed by operational urgencies.

The Strategic Council’s primary deliverables are the strategy canvas defining your market position, the value proposition articulating your differentiated offering, the operational model describing how you’ll deliver value, and the strategic roadmap outlining key initiatives and milestones. These documents become the foundation for all operational planning and execution.

3. Bridge strategy to execution quarterly

The critical handoff between strategic thinking and operational execution happens during your quarterly planning process. This is where Strategic Council insights get translated into specific priorities, initiatives, and resource allocation decisions that drive practical execution.

During quarterly planning, review what the Strategic Council has learned about market dynamics, competitive positioning, and customer needs. Then determine which operational improvements, process changes, and capability developments will best support your strategic direction. This ensures your operational excellence efforts align with and advance your strategic objectives rather than just optimizing existing processes.

The quarterly planning cycle also provides regular opportunities to assess whether you’re maintaining the right balance between strategic development and operational improvement based on your current business challenges and market conditions.

4. Watch for planning imbalance warning signs

Companies struggling with profitability as they grow typically aren’t focused enough on strategic planning. They’re improving delivery and efficiency but haven’t differentiated their value proposition or positioned themselves to command premium pricing in their market. They’re optimizing a business model that isn’t strategically sound, working harder rather than working smarter on the right opportunities.

Companies struggling with consistent delivery, quality issues, or customer satisfaction aren’t focused enough on operational planning. They may have compelling strategic vision and market positioning, but they lack the operational discipline and systematic processes to execute reliably at scale. Their strategy is solid, but their delivery undermines their market position and customer trust.

Monitor these indicators regularly and adjust your planning focus accordingly. Strategic planning without operational discipline creates unreliable execution. Operational planning without strategic direction creates efficient delivery of undifferentiated value.

Most leadership teams default to whatever type of planning feels more comfortable or familiar, but sustained growth requires intentional focus on both strategic evolution and operational excellence. Companies that master this balance don’t just improve their current performance—they build the foundation for continued success as markets evolve and competition intensifies. The best growth companies recognize that strategic and operational planning are complementary disciplines that reinforce each other when executed systematically.