Ask your team one question on Monday morning: are we winning? Watch the room. One person checks the CRM, one looks at the ceiling, one starts a story about a big deal that's almost there. Nobody can say yes or no.

That's not a team problem. That's what happens when a company runs on a plan instead of a strategy. A plan feels safe. It just can't tell you if you're winning.

And when nobody can answer, every decision walks back to your desk. You stay the only one who knows the game.. and the only real closer.

I talked this through with Kerry Siggins on Reflect Forward. Kerry runs StoneAge, a manufacturer of disruptive products, and go-to-market is something her team talks about a lot. Listen to the full conversation: Stop Calling It Strategy, on Reflect Forward

The Saturday I asked a CEO for three more days

Early in my career I ran a retreat for an automotive Fortune 500 company. Number two in their market. Their top 42 people had flown in from everywhere. After four days, we had no solution.

So I did the uncomfortable thing. On a Saturday, I asked the CEO for his 42 people for three more days.

For almost any other topic, that question gets you fired. He said yes, immediately. His reason stuck with me: "if I send them back to their countries right now without a strategy, what do they tell their people?"

🐬 That's the test. When your people walk back to their desks, can they say what game you're playing and how you'll win it?

A plan is a list. A strategy is a bet.

"A plan is a list of things." Do this, this and this, in that country, with that product.

Leaders default to the list for a simple reason. "You don't get fired if you have a list."

A strategy is different. It's you, as the leader, writing down four assumptions:

1. What the world needs from you.
2. What you're the best at.
3. Which game you're going to win.
4. How you'll win it in the next 90 days and 12 months.

You don't know if they're true. Nobody knows the future. "So it's really uncomfortable to stand up, write them down, and stand behind them and you can lose."

That discomfort is the job. A list protects you. Four written assumptions put your judgment on the table, in front of everyone, and that's exactly what lets your team move without asking you every day. It's also what makes you a leader people follow.

Kerry shared her own version of this. Years ago, her second in command told her nobody knew where she was going. She had the vision in her head, but the team was running a to-do list. So she wrote down what the future looks like, and the company still uses that document today to check its assumptions every year.

One page, two questions

Every team I've worked with needs the same two answers. "What's the direction and what do we do this week to move towards that direction?"

That's why the focus card is one page. On purpose. It has to be so simple that everybody knows their task from Monday to Friday.

It's one spreadsheet with two tabs:

• Tab 1: the strategy. The vision, the one-year target, the 90 days, and this week.
• Tab 2: the weekly metrics. What goes in, and what should come out.

On that page, every person also gets a swim lane. They run their thing end to end. "I don't have to ask anybody for a budget, for permission, for signing anything. That's a swim lane."

Without it, someone has to stop after five minutes over a $20,000 decision and come find you. "You have to ask somebody else and then you create meetings instead of creating flow." With it, the work moves while you're out closing.

🐯 In sales it sounds like this: "I have to call 10 people a day and what should come out? I should generate three meetings for the CEO every day." One input, one output. Your rep knows what to do first thing in the morning, and so do you.

That's control. Your rep isn't chasing or hoping a deal shows up, so they walk into the sales call to lead it, not to beg for it.

Find what happens before the deal

Most founders track the outcome. Deals closed. Revenue. Those numbers arrive late, after the quarter is already decided.

So the first thing we map with every team: "what happens before that outcome happens?" Before you close the big deal, who does what? Sales? Marketing? Which activity, how many times a week?

Once that's on one page, the noise drops. You stop fighting a hundred small fires and see the 20% that moves the 80%. That becomes the standard. You repeat it.

🌴 And the weekend feels different. You walk out of the Friday meeting knowing three things are working, and you'll do them again on Monday. That's breathing room. Every Friday a fresh score, every Monday a fresh shot.

Try to kill your own strategy every Friday

Here's the part most leaders skip. They write the strategy, then spend the year defending it. A strategy nobody tests goes stale fast, like air in a room with the windows shut.

Do the opposite. "Now try to invalidate it every week."

On Friday, look at your own activities and ask: are we actually moving in that direction, at the right pace? Don't look for applause. "Show me that we're winning."

It's honest and a bit rough, in a good way. "The sales script is fine, but hey, Terry, you have to call more people." Now you know whether you have a script problem or an execution problem, after one week, not after one quarter.

If you try to break your assumption and you can't, now you're winning. And that win tastes sweet, because the scorecard proved it. As Kerry put it: don't drink your own Kool-Aid.

That's the loop we run with our clients: Monday Strategy to set the week, Friday Learnings to score it. Half an hour on Monday, 45 minutes on Friday. In most teams it replaces meetings instead of adding one.

Built like Lego, not Duplo

Why weekly and not quarterly? Because things change faster than a quarter. Tariffs, a big client, a new competitor. "Will it take you 10 minutes or 10 weeks?" to change direction?

Look at a project once a month and you find out something is broken 30 days late. Over budget, over time, and the quarter is gone.

"We need to be built like Lego not Duplo." Small parts you can recombine. A Duplo horse stays a horse. Lego parts become a house, a car, a pool.

One client was the biggest marketing agency in their country, crushing it with the big accounts. Then their clients started asking where every dollar went, and smaller, more agile agencies could show them. So the team decided to cannibalize themselves before the competition did, and used this to build a new sub-brand in 90 days. Twelve weekly sprints, one problem per week. They landed their first client around week four, while still building. Every piece of work for a client was saved as a module for the next one. After 90 days: a new brand, a new website, 16 modules ready to deliver, and two clients worth around $300,000.

🐬 Same team. The difference was a weekly cadence and a strategy small enough to change on a Tuesday.

Start this week

1. Write your four assumptions. One sentence each. Put your name on it.
2. Map what happens before the deal. Which activity, by whom, how often.
3. Pick one input and one output per person. Put them on tab two.
4. Monday: say your priority out loud. Let the team tell you if it's the right one.
5. Friday: try to break the strategy. Keep what works. Stop what doesn't.

🌴 "If it's overwhelming, don't do it." It should take ten minutes to set up and ten minutes to change.

🐯 That's Sprintlife. You lead the week instead of the week leading you, and you know on Friday whether you're winning.

The focus card is free: one page, two tabs, strategy on the first, weekly metrics on the second. Grab it with the other free tools at the Sprint Club below. Want the weekly rhythm, plus a sales process your new hires can run without you, installed with a coach beside you? That's our 90-Day Sales Acceleration.

Listen to the full conversation with Kerry: Reflect Forward with Simon Severino

Grab the free tools and join the Sprint Club: https://www.strategysprints.com

Ready to accelerate now? Book a Discovery Call: https://calendly.com/strategysprint/discovery-call

Happy hunting.
Simon & The Sprinters 🐬⚡️🐆