Why Strategy Should Always Come Before Planning

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:"

Ecclesiastes 3:1 (King James Version)

The fourth quarter of 2026 will begin in four days, which means that many business leaders are already engaged or will soon be engaged in planning for 2027. Over the next several weeks, they will be evaluating how well their business performed this year and looking for ways to improve performance next year.

This annual ritual is usually called strategic planning, and the output of the process (in larger companies at least) is often a lengthy document that describes what company leaders want to accomplish in the coming year and what actions they intend to take.

Unfortunately, many business leaders confuse planning with strategy. They assume that the development of a "strategic" plan is equivalent to the formulation of a strategy.

In reality, formulating a strategy and developing plans are fundamentally different tasks. They require leaders to address different issues and, more importantly, they demand different types of thinking.

The Differences Between Strategy and Plans

In June 2022, Harvard Business Review published the following video featuring Roger L. Martin, the co-author of Playing to Win:  How Strategy Really Works, and one of today's leading authorities on strategy:

In this video, Martin discusses several important differences between strategy and plans.

As of a couple of days ago, the video had been viewed more than 6.7 million times, which almost certainly makes it one of the most widely viewed videos about business strategy ever published. If you haven't already seen the video, I strongly recommend you watch it, particularly if you're about to start your planning for next year.

Strategy and Planning Are Both Needed

While it's important to understand how strategy and planning differ, it's equally important to recognize that both are critical to business success.

A strategy is the result of making several closely-related choices that are intended to enable a company to establish competitive advantage.

To create a strategy, business leaders must choose where their company will compete (in what product or service categories, for what type(s) of customers, in what geographies, etc.), and they must describe how they believe their company can create value for their target customers that is superior to the value offered by competitors. Then, they need to identify the capabilities their company will need to be successful with their "where to compete" and "how to win" choices.

The strategy development process will usually reveal that a company needs to develop new capabilities or improve existing ones to enhance their odds of achieving success with their chosen strategy. This realization will cause business leaders to launch a set of initiatives or projects to develop or improve the necessary capabilities.

It's at this point that planning becomes critically important. Thorough planning enables company leaders and managers to effectively manage initiatives and projects by establishing clear objectives, timelines, and responsibilities for each initiative and by committing adequate resources (people, budget, etc.) to each project.

So, business success requires both a sound, market-informed strategy and thorough planning, but these management techniques must be used in the right sequence. Strategy formulation should always precede planning because every plan developed should be based on, and designed to support, the choices that define the company's strategy.

For example, a company's strategy will embody choices about what types of customers the company will seek to serve and how the company will create value for its target customers. It's impossible to develop a sensible marketing plan until those strategic choices have been made.

Having a strategy in place makes planning easier because the strategy provides guidance and "guardrails" for the planning process. The content of the strategy enables company leaders to identify the initiatives or projects that are necessary for the strategy to work and therefore are most likely to produce the desired outcomes.

To riff on a quotation usually attributed (probably incorrectly) to Sun Tzu:  "Strategy without planning is the slowest route to victory. Planning without strategy is the noise before defeat."

[Research Round-Up] Thought-Provoking Insights on the State of the CMO

Source:  Lippincott and Bloomberg Media

(This month's Research Round-Up features the CMO Outlook 2026 survey by Lippincott and Bloomberg Media. This research examines several important marketing issues from a unique perspective, and this approach makes the 100-page report well worth reading.)

Lippincott and Bloomberg Media recently published the results of their "CMO Outlook 2026" survey. The objectives of this study were to identify the major challenges today's CMOs are facing, and to "help marketers see their challenges differently."

The researchers contend that, while most CMOs face similar high-level challenges, the shape of the challenges faced by an individual CMO and how he or she responds to those challenges are largely determined by the organizational context in which the CMO is working.

About the Survey

The CMO Outlook 2026 survey produced 541 responses from CMOs or equivalent senior marketing leaders. Seventy-one percent (71%) of the respondents identified themselves as the "primary and senior-most marketing decision-maker" in their organization, while 29% said they were "amongst the senior-most marketing decision-makers" in their organization.

Thirty-three percent (33%) of the survey respondents were from the United States and Canada, and the balance were from Europe (22%), Asia-Pacific (22%), Latin America (20%), and the Middle East (2%).

The survey was conducted by NewtonX, an independent B2B market research firm.

Four Types of CMOs

What separates the Lippincott/Bloomberg study from others on similar topics is its focus on how the organizational context in which a CMO works affects the particular challenges they face and the actions they take to respond to those challenges.

The researchers identified four distinct cohorts of CMOs. Two of those cohorts consist of CMOs who are "organizationally empowered," and the other two cohorts include CMOs who are "organizationally constrained."

Organizationally empowered CMOs are those working in organizations where the value of marketing  is understood and recognized by the CEO and other senior leaders, and where the CMO can influence the strategic direction of the organization.

Organizationally constrained CMOs are those working in organizations where the strategic value of marketing is not widely recognized, and where marketing is generally viewed as a support function.

The researchers identified two types of organizationally empowered CMOs - Transformation Leaders and Revenue Drivers.

• Transformation Leaders - "Transformation Leaders are future-oriented marketers focused on transformation at scale, AI adoption, and long-term capability building . . . these CMOs tend to hold significant strategic authority within their companies and see marketing as a driver of broader business direction."

• Revenue Drivers - "Revenue Drivers are commercially oriented operators focused on measurable growth, demand generation, and business accountability . . . these CMOs have earned organizational trust by speaking the language of performance:  Revenue, pipeline, and attributable impact. They . . . excel at balancing immediate business pressures with longer-term growth mandates."

The researchers also identified two types of organizationally constrained CMOs - Credibility Builders and Institutional Navigators.

• Credibility Builders - "Credibility Builders are marketers fighting to establish credibility and strategic standing within their organizations. More likely to be . . . in organizations where marketing is viewed primarily as sales enablement, these CMOs spend a disproportionate amount of time proving marketing's value internally."

• Institutional Navigators - "These CMOs often hold respected positions within the business, yet operate in environments slowed by fragmented decision-making, excessive approvals, and rigid structures . . . they are not fighting to earn a seat at the table; they are fighting to make the table move."

Unfortunately, the study report does not indicate the percentage of survey respondents who fall into each of these four CMO cohorts or what criteria were used to place each respondent in the appropriate cohort.

Other Findings

The Lippincott/Bloomberg study also addresses a range of other important issues. For example, the study report identifies five primary challenges today's CMOs are facing.

• Driving growth
• Navigating bureaucracy
• Measuring impact
• Technological enablement in the age of AI
• Culture-based marketing

The study report does not discuss how these challenges were identified, nor does it provide any data supporting their selection. It does include a thoughtful discussion of how CMOs are addressing these five challenges.

*****

The Lippincott/Bloomberg survey report provides several important insights about the "state of the CMO." While the report does not include some data points that I think should have been included, the views expressed in the report are well-reasoned and thought-provoking. For that reason, I recommend that you take the time to review the full report.