Is that EBITA tower a strategic plan ?

As a leader, your role is a delicate balancing act: fostering value creation across a diverse group of stakeholders—customers, shareholders, employees, communities, suppliers, regulators, and beyond. Each plays a unique role in your ecosystem, and while priorities may shift, all must be managed thoughtfully to ensure your business thrives.

Strategic planning is your tool for shaping the future, aiming to eliminate barriers and maximize value creation for stakeholders. But let’s face it: only one group drives top-line revenue—your customers. While others contribute by consuming resources or investing for a return, the crux of your strategic focus must always be on creating value for customers, regardless of the business model.

A robust strategy tracks value creation for all stakeholders, all while preparing your business to navigate an unpredictable future. This means embedding adaptability, evolution, and customer-centric innovation into your plans. As customer needs evolve, so must your business.

By the end of your strategic plan, your business should emerge stronger—larger, more profitable, and more resilient. Think: a better customer portfolio, enhanced market routes, deeper differentiation, stronger partnerships, and a rock-solid balance sheet. These outcomes should be measurable, quantifiable, and tied to clear objectives.

But here’s the catch: if your strategy boils down to a laundry list of projects chasing individual EBITA (earnings before interest, taxes, and amortization) targets, you’re setting yourself up for trouble. This narrow focus risks turning your strategy into an inward-looking exercise that prioritizes short-term profits over long-term value creation. When reporting incremental profit becomes the centerpiece, the bigger picture is often lost.

What follows? Behaviors like ignoring cannibalization of new products, shying away from transformational (but risky) initiatives, or missing critical signals from evolving customer needs. Add in the burden of an overly granular process or a pricey tracking system, and your strategy becomes a treadmill of short-term execution—drifting further from its purpose of fostering sustainable value creation.

So, take a hard look at your strategic plan. Is it a stack of EBITA measures masquerading as a roadmap? If so, it’s likely to meet the same fate as many failed strategies. Instead, ask yourself: Does this plan clearly define how the business will create value for customers? And, how will that customer value drive value creation for all stakeholders?

If your plan can answer these questions, you have a dynamic tool to guide your business, adjust course as needed, and deliver lasting impact.

Thoughts? Comments? Reposts?... Let's interact!