Strategic Frameworks & Insights
New CEO Challenges: Why Experience Alone Won’t Save Your Strategy
By Erin Sedor | Black Fox Strategy Being a CEO is tough stuff. That’s not a complaint. It’s a baseline reality that gets glossed over in most leadership conversations. We celebrate the title, the authority, the corner office—and then quietly wonder why so many leaders who look ready on paper end up stuck within the…
Read MoreQuantum Intelligence: the Leadership Attribute CEOs Can’t Afford to Ignore
By Erin Sedor | Black Fox Strategy There is no shortage of leadership frameworks in the world. Transformational. Servant. Adaptive. Systems. Complexity. Each one was developed with good intention and solid theory behind it. Each one has contributed something meaningful to how we think about leading organizations. And yet…. Despite decades of leadership research, 90%…
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 MoreRisk Appetite Is a Leadership Decision, Not a Compliance Exercise
By Erin Sedor | Black Fox Strategy You’ve already defined your risk appetite. You just didn’t do it on purpose. Every strategic decision you’ve made—every investment, every hire, every market you’ve entered or walked away from—carries a risk profile. Whether you articulated it or not, you were making a statement about how much risk your…
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 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 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 MoreWhy You Need More Than a Strategic Planning Facilitator in Your Corner
By Erin Sedor | Black Fox Strategy It’s not a mystery that you need a good strategy and a solid plan to execute it. Most leaders understand this. What most leaders underestimate is what it actually takes to get there. The problem with most strategic planning efforts isn’t the process itself. There are plenty of…
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