Greetings Operators!

When building a company, our ego’s want to run the show, and ship results.

Yet, one of the most powerful ways to get results is from help. The highest level founders all had 1-3 people who were consistently helping with direction, execution, market understanding, and leadership.

So how do you harness this for yourself?

Find a few people who can do what you’re doing 10x better than you (maybe because of experience, maybe because of contact, and maybe because they are just better)… and make them stakeholders.

Then, write transparently on your strategy, your approach, your tasks, and your thoughts - every week. Build a thread of strategy that ties together and can be critiqued, encouraged, and possibly even supported from their network or knowledge.

Over the course of a year, you’ll end up 10x further ahead with the practice… both because of what it does to your thinking, and what it invites from others.

Enjoy my note on The Stakeholder Update 👇️ 

SHORT ISSUE
The Stakeholder Update

Your strategic plan is beautiful—and completely useless.

It's sitting in a folder (digital or otherwise) while you're firefighting your way through another week of "urgent" tasks that somehow crowd out the strategic work that could actually transform your business.

Here's what's really happening: You're confusing strategic planning with strategic thinking. You create gorgeous documents reviewed quarterly and forgotten weekly, while the real work—consistently choosing what matters most—gets buried under operational noise.

But there's a simple practice that will redefine your prioritize on a continual basis, setting up execution momentum.

Your Weekly Strategic Forcing Function

The highest-performing leaders I've worked with share a discipline: they write a weekly or Bi-weekly stakeholder note to their C-Suite and Board.

This isn't another communication tool. It's strategic planning disguised as stakeholder updates—a practice that transforms scattered thinking into coordinated action.

Here's why it works: Writing is thinking made visible. When you know experienced stakeholders will read your strategic rationale, something powerful happens. The gaps become obvious. Vague concepts crystallize into actionable plans. You can't hide behind buzzwords when seasoned business leaders are evaluating your logic.

The Strategic Impact: Six Ways This Changes Everything

👉️ Forces Strategic Clarity
Most leaders think they have clarity until they try explaining it to their board. The discipline of writing forces you to develop thinking worth communicating. No more hand-waving or strategic theater.

👉️ Creates True Alignment
Your leadership team isn't as aligned as you think. Without clear, consistent communication, even talented teams work at cross-purposes. Your weekly note becomes the single source of truth that focuses energy instead of fragmenting it.

👉️ Establishes Personal Prioritization Rhythm
Every week becomes a moment of truth: "Am I working on the biggest needle-moving opportunities?" Without this forcing function, you stay busy without being productive, working on urgent instead of important.

👉️ Unlocks High-Value Advisory Input
Your advisors have decades of wisdom, but they can only help when they understand your thinking process. Share reasoning, not just results. Create opportunities for course correction before problems become crises.

👉️ Creates Authentic Accountability
Public commitments to stakeholders drive performance in ways internal deadlines can't match. This becomes your personal performance management system—transparency that elevates your standards.

👉️ Builds Consistent Strategic Action
Regular communication rhythms create execution rhythms. You start thinking in strategic weekly cycles instead of just reacting to your inbox. Sporadic effort transforms into consistent progress.

The Framework: Three Strategic Questions

Your weekly note addresses three core elements:

Strategic Context
What key opportunity, challenge, or concept is consuming your highest-level thinking this week?

Personal Commitments
What are you personally committing to accomplish? Not your team—you. Include why each represents your highest and best use of time.

Current Strategic Blockers
What's preventing progress on your most important priorities? Create transparency about obstacles that might require stakeholder-level resolution.

NEXT STEP

Write your first note—honest, not perfect. Send it to your board with context: "Starting a weekly strategic planning discipline. This is my thinking and commitments. Feedback welcome."

Set the recurring calendar invite immediately. Same time, every week, non-negotiable.'

👉️ Bonus: Request your C-suit personal commitments before hand, and add those in for stakeholder clarity and transparency. Hold everyone accountable to continual execution.

💡 Quick Win for Next Week

Open your calendar, block 30 minutes this Friday at 3 PM, title it "Weekly Strategic Planning," set it to recurring, then create a simple template with those three headers and commit to sending your first note to at least one board member or advisor.

Your Friday Action Plan

Step 1: Block the Time (5 minutes)

• Open your calendar right now

• Block 45 minutes this Friday afternoon (ideally 3-4 PM when your energy is focused but the week's urgency has settled)

• Title it "Weekly Strategic Planning Session"

• Set it as recurring, same time every Friday

Step 2: Create Your Template (10 minutes) Create a simple document with these three sections:

STRATEGIC FOCUS THIS WEEK
What key opportunity, challenge, or strategic concept consumed my highest-level thinking this week?

MY PERSONAL COMMITMENTS (Next 7 Days)
What am I personally committing to accomplish? Why does each represent my best use of time?

WHAT'S BLOCKING MY PROGRESS  
What obstacles are preventing me from making progress on my most important priorities?

🔥 Hot Take of the Week 

If you can't explain your strategy in a weekly note to your board, you don't have a strategy—you have strategic theater.

Real strategic planning happens weekly, not annually. It's personal, not committee-driven. It's about consistent strategic choices, not perfect strategic documents

The leaders who resist this discipline are usually the ones who need it most. They're so caught up in operational urgency they've lost touch with strategic importance.

What's Working for You?

Hit reply and let me know: What's your current method for maintaining strategic focus and staying accountable to your most important priorities? What's the biggest challenge you face in filtering what you could work on versus what you should work on?