Posts by Erin Sedor
What AI Can’t Do: The Leadership Capabilities That Just Became Non-Negotiable
By Erin Sedor | Black Fox Strategy Everyone is talking about what AI can do. And fair enough—it’s remarkable. AI can analyze a decade of market data in seconds, generate competitive intelligence reports overnight, and draft communication that sounds eerily like it came from your best strategist. The speed is real. The scale is real.…
Read MoreGet Off the Transformation Treadmill: Equilibrium as a Strategic Discipline
Bold transformation has become the default prescription for whatever ails your organization. Revenue flat? Transform. Culture struggling? Transform. Market shifting? Transform again. Competitors making moves? Bigger transformation. Stakeholders anxious? Promise them the boldest transformation yet. The result? Exhausted teams. Cynical employees. Strategies that never gain traction before the next overhaul begins. And leadership so consumed…
Read MoreYour Strategic Plan Isn’t Broken. It’s Incomplete. A New Take on Strategic Planning 2026.
By Erin Sedor | Black Fox Strategy Here’s something I almost never hear from the CEOs I work with: “My strategic plan is terrible.” What I hear instead is some version of: “The plan is fine. The goals make sense. But something’s off and I can’t put my finger on it.” They’re not wrong. And…
Read MorePurpose Is Not Your Mission Statement (And Why That Distinction Matters)
Here’s a conversation I have at least once a month. A CEO hands me their strategic plan. Somewhere near the top – usually on page one, sometimes framed on the wall – there’s a mission statement. Maybe a vision statement too. They point to it proudly and say, “We’ve got our purpose nailed down.” Except…
Read MoreThe Data Behind Purpose-Driven Strategy: Why 90% of Plans Fail and What the Top 10% Do Differently
12 Minute Read Purpose-driven organizations achieve 25% higher revenue and 40% higher employee retention than their competitors. That’s not marketing hype. That’s data from CECP’s 2025 “Giving in Numbers” report and The Cigna Group’s research on organizational performance. But here’s what most CEOs miss: Having a purpose statement doesn’t deliver these results. Acting on that…
Read MoreCEO Strategy Coaching vs. Executive Coaching: What Senior Leaders Actually Need
7-8 Minute Read Forty percent of CEOs fail within their first eighteen months. Not because they lack intelligence. Not because they don’t work hard enough. They fail because they’re unprepared for the strategic challenges they face—and the kind of support they’re getting isn’t addressing the real problem. Most CEOs hire executive coaches to work on…
Read MoreAvoiding Transformation Fatigue Starts with Designing Better Strategy
Updated: Feb 24 Erin Sedor | Black Fox Strategy I was talking with a colleague last week about the non-stop change initiatives we were both seeing with our clients. She was working with a CEO who had just announced his organization’s third major transformation in five years. First came the digital transformation. Then the culture transformation.…
Read MoreResilience Isn’t Bouncing Back — It’s Building Forward: Adaptive Strategy for CEOs
By Erin Sedor | Black Fox Strategy Somewhere along the way, “resilience” became the business world’s favorite survival word. It showed up in boardrooms, annual reports, and keynote titles. It became shorthand for everything from crisis recovery to organizational grit to the general ability to “weather the storm.” And almost everywhere I see it used,…
Read MoreThe Strategic Question You’re Not Asking (and what you risk when you don’t)
Nearly every leader and their team ask the same questions about strategy: “What markets should we enter?” “What products should we build?” “What’s our competitive differentiation?” “How do we grow revenue?” “What opportunities should we pursue?” These are all outside-in questions. What you will capture in the market. What numbers you will target. What ground…
Read MoreStrategy Execution Failure Isn’t Your Problem: Strategy Design Is
“Our strategy is fine. We just need better execution.” I’ve heard this phrase – or variations of it – countless times during my career. I am pretty sure I even said it myself during my corporate days. It’s become business gospel, the default explanation for why strategic plans fail to deliver. The strategy is brilliant.…
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