Your Team Is in Meetings All Day—So Why Does No One Know the Plan?
Why your team thinks you have a plan when you actually don't—and how to build a planning system that actually works.
I spent a decade building a software development company. We made the Inc. 500 list five years in a row before I sold the business in 2013. Along the way, I made every mistake a founder can make—and one of the most painful was believing that my team understood the plan just because we talked about it constantly.
We had meetings. Lots of them. Weekly leadership syncs, quarterly offsites, impromptu strategy sessions. I was thinking about where the business was going all the time, so I assumed everyone else was too.
They weren't.
It took me years to realize that the conversations in my head weren't landing with my team. What felt like alignment to me was actually confusion for them. I call this the Meeting Mirage—the illusion that you're doing strategic planning when you're really just talking.
Now I work as a business coach for founder-CEOs of companies between $5M and $50M in revenue, and I see this pattern constantly. Smart, hardworking leaders who are doing all the right things on the surface but can't figure out why their teams aren't aligned. Nine times out of ten, the problem isn't effort. It's the absence of a real planning system.
What the Meeting Mirage Looks Like
The pattern is remarkably consistent. The founder tells me they're planning all the time. There are standing meetings on the calendar. Maybe a yearly offsite at a nice location. Strategy comes up in almost every conversation.
But when I sit down with the leadership team and ask a simple question—what are your top three priorities this quarter?—I get five different answers. Or worse, I get confident answers that completely contradict each other.
The activity is there. The calendars are full. But the output—genuine strategic clarity that everyone can point to—is missing. The meetings feel productive in the moment, but nothing is being captured, documented, or translated into action. That's the mirage.
Why Founders Fall Into This Trap
Founders live in the strategy. They're thinking about business growth strategy while they're in the shower, on their commute, in the middle of dinner. The plan feels obvious because it's always running in the background.
The problem is that none of that thinking is visible to the team. The founder assumes that because they said something in a meeting, it landed. But saying something once isn't the same as creating shared understanding. And shared understanding requires more than conversation—it requires documentation, repetition, and a system that reinforces priorities over time.
Without that system, the team fills in the gaps with their own assumptions. They do their best to guess what matters most, and they're often wrong. Not because they're not paying attention, but because the founder never made the plan explicit.
What This Pattern Costs Your Business
The Meeting Mirage creates friction everywhere. Decisions slow down because people aren't sure what matters most. Teams work hard on initiatives that turn out to be low priority. Leaders get frustrated because they feel like they're repeating themselves constantly—and the team gets frustrated because the direction keeps changing.
The worst part is the founder usually can't see it. From their perspective, they're communicating nonstop. They're in every meeting. They're talking about strategy all the time. So when the team isn't aligned, it feels like a people problem—like the team just isn't getting it.
But it's not a people problem. It's a systems problem. And systems problems require systems solutions. This is often where founder coaching or leadership coaching becomes valuable—having someone outside the business who can see the gap between what you think you're communicating and what's actually landing.
What a Real Planning System Looks Like
Effective strategic planning isn't one meeting or one document. It's a connected set of rhythms—each with a specific purpose, running at a specific cadence, and feeding into the next.
Annual planning sets the big picture. Where are we going? What are we trying to accomplish this year? What are the major bets we're making? This is typically a full-day strategic planning retreat with the leadership team, resulting in a clear set of goals and strategic priorities for the year.
Quarterly planning translates the annual goals into 90-day priorities. What are the three to five things that must get done this quarter to stay on track? This is a half-day session that produces specific, measurable outcomes with clear owners.
Monthly reviews check progress. Are we on track? What's working? What's not? This is a 90-minute session focused on adjusting the course before small problems become big ones.
Weekly meetings keep the team accountable. What did we commit to last week? What are we committing to this week? What's in the way? This is a 60-minute session that creates a drumbeat of accountability.
Daily stand-ups surface issues fast. A 15-minute sync to keep everyone aligned on immediate priorities and blockers.
Each rhythm connects to the next. Skip one, and the system starts to break down. Do all of them consistently, and alignment becomes automatic.
How to Know If You Have This Problem
There's a simple test. Ask each member of your leadership team—separately—to write down the company's top three priorities for the quarter. Don't let them confer. Don't give them hints.
If you get the same answers from everyone, you're in good shape. If you get different answers, or hesitation, or vague generalities, you have a Meeting Mirage problem. The conversations are happening, but the clarity isn't landing.
Where to Start Building Your System
You don't need to build the whole system at once. Start with one thing: write down your quarterly priorities. One page. Three to five priorities. Clear owners and deadlines. Share it with your leadership team and review it every week.
That single change—making the plan explicit and visible—will expose gaps you didn't know existed. From there, you can layer in the other rhythms. Add a weekly check-in. Then a monthly review. Build the system over time until it runs itself.
The goal isn't more meetings. It's meetings that actually produce alignment. Every conversation should connect back to the documented plan. If it doesn't, you're just adding noise.
Questions for You and Your Team
Before moving on, take a few minutes to reflect on these questions—ideally with your leadership team. The goal isn't to have perfect answers. It's to surface the gaps between what you think is happening and what's actually landing with your team.
If you asked each member of your leadership team to name the top three priorities this quarter, would you get the same answers? This reveals whether your planning conversations are creating real alignment or just the illusion of it.
Which of your current meetings actually produce documented decisions and accountability—and which are just conversations? Not all meetings are equal. The ones that matter leave a record and create commitments.
Where is your strategic plan right now? Could your team find it and point to it without asking you? If the plan only exists in your head or is buried in a slide deck no one opens, it's not doing its job.
What to Do Next
If this pattern sounds familiar, you're not alone. Most of the founders I work with started exactly here—lots of meetings, very little clarity.
If you want to see where your planning system stands relative to other growth companies, take the Growth Readiness Assessment. It's a free 15-minute diagnostic that scores your business across six dimensions, including Planning.
Take the Growth Readiness Assessment
If you'd like help building a strategic planning system for your company, I offer a free 60-minute consultation to talk through where you are and where you're trying to go.
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About the Author
Bruce Eckfeldt is a strategic business coach and exit planning advisor who helps founder-CEOs of growth-stage companies scale systematically and exit successfully. A former Inc. 500 CEO who built and sold his own company, he brings real-world operational experience to strategic planning and leadership development. He's a certified ScalingUp and 3HAG/Metronomics coach, Certified Exit Planning Advisor (CEPA), an Inc. Magazine contributor, and host of the "From Angel to Exit" podcast. Bruce works with growth companies in complex industries, guiding leadership teams through growth challenges and exit preparation. Reach him at bruce@eckfeldt.com with any questions or if you want more information or to book a call with him.
