Strategy as Living Architecture
The Growth Paradox: What You’re Not Building Is Eroding Your Strategy
By Erin Sedor | Black Fox Strategy Every CEO knows what growth looks like on the outside. Market expansion. New revenue streams. Customer acquisition. Headcount. These are the numbers that get celebrated in board meetings and reported in press releases. And they should be—external growth is the visible proof that an organization is gaining ground.…
Read MorePurpose Drift: Why Your Strategy Fails Before It Reaches the Market
By Erin Sedor | Black Fox Strategy Here’s a pattern I see play out with almost every organization I work with: the strategy looks good on paper. The vision is polished. The mission statement reads well on the website. The growth targets are ambitious and the board is satisfied. And then nothing. It just kind…
Read MoreWhy Your Risk Program and Your Strategic Plan Don’t Talk to Each Other
By Erin Sedor | Black Fox Strategy Six in ten enterprise risk management programs report a connection to strategic planning. That sounds encouraging until you read the rest of the sentence. Most of those programs fail to connect ERM insights with actual strategic decision-making. This disconnect between your risk program and strategic plan is costing…
Read MoreWhat Quantum Physics Taught Me About Strategic Planning
By Erin Sedor | Black Fox Strategy I didn’t come to quantum physics through a textbook. I came to it through frustration and epiphany. After thirty-plus years of working in and with organizations on all things risk and strategy—tribal governments, publicly traded tech companies, non-profits, federal agencies, Alaska Native Corporations, universities—I kept running into the…
Read MorePerformance Beyond Productivity: What 74% of Leaders Say They Need to Measure Differently
By Erin Sedor | Black Fox Strategy Seventy-four percent of leaders say they need better ways to measure performance beyond traditional productivity metrics. Read that again. Not 74% of academics. Not 74% of consultants. Seventy-four percent of the people literally running these organizations are telling us that what they’re measuring isn’t giving them what they…
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 MorePurpose-Driven Strategy: 25% Higher Revenue, By Design
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 MoreAdaptive Strategy for CEOs: Build Forward, Not Back
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 Planning Question Most CEOs Never Ask
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 MoreStop Blaming Execution. Your Strategy Design Is The Flaw.
“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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