Why Your Strategic Plan Is Probably Just an Expensive Wish List
Francis Wade dissects why most strategic plans are expensive wish lists masquerading as strategy—and reveals the one question that exposes the fraud: "What do we believe has to be true for this to work?" Jamaica's Citizens Security Secretariat learned this brutally. Their flagship initiative trained 99,000 at-risk parents, burned through €1 million in EU funding, and failed spectacularly. Instead of doubling down or blaming execution, they did something radical: admitted their hypothesis was wrong. A police commissioner's offhand question—"When will you do something about the few schools producing most of our criminals?"—redirected everything. Educational data revealed the real constraint: children leaving primary school reading at grade-2 level, seeking achievement in gangs instead of classrooms. Wade's four-step scientific approach transforms planning into hypothesis testing. The diagnostic at 8:15 uses AI prompts to expose whether your plan contains actual strategy or just hope disguised as action. 5 Key Timestamps: [01:26] The Uncomfortable Truth About Strategic Plans – Why calling something "strategic" doesn't make it strategic. Most planning exercises produce elaborate activity lists, not strategies. The missing ingredient: a testable hypothesis about what has to be true for success [03:36] The €1 Million Failure That Changed Everything – How Jamaica's Citizens Security Secretariat's flagship initiative trained 99,000 parents, burned through EU funding, and collapsed completely—then did something most organizations never do: admitted the hypothesis was wrong [04:14] The Question That Redirected an Entire National Strategy – Tony Anderson's challenge about "the few schools producing most of our criminals" sent researchers into education data for the first time, revealing the real constraint wasn't parenting—it was literacy and unaddressed trauma [05:31] The Four-Step Scientific Approach to Strategy – Treat plans as temporary hypotheses, let data reveal true constraints, build measurable cause-effect models, and institutionalize learning. How CSS contributed to reducing Jamaica's violent crime 40% through evidence, not willpower [08:15] The AI Diagnostic That Exposes Fake Strategy – Six prompts to analyze your current strategic plan and reveal whether it contains a testable hypothesis or just hope disguised as action. If AI can't find your central hypothesis, neither can your team
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