Is it Strategy or Theatre?
Why the best strategy sessions feel more like exploration than execution, and how to make space for what really moves the work forward.
I’ve sat in rooms where everyone nods.
The slides are tight. The roadmap’s agreed. And yet… no one leaves satisfied.
That’s not clarity. That’s choreography.
It feels aligned, but only on the surface. No one said what they really meant. Or someone did, and it went nowhere. The actions were logged, the goals recapped, but the work didn’t move forward. Not really.
So let’s be honest: if no one left feeling stretched or stirred, maybe it wasn’t strategy… It was performance. And even the most well-meaning clarity work can get stuck there.
It’s okay, I’ve been there too.
On alignment and discomfort…
I’ve seen it over and over: the most productive sessions are rarely the most comfortable ones.
Not because there’s conflict. But because there’s truth. The kind that doesn’t sit neatly on a slide.
People often agree on what needs to be done. Some even agree on who should do it. But rarely do they talk about why - not properly, not out loud. Because asking why means slowing down. It means sitting with contradiction or breaking the flow.
Sometimes though, that’s exactly what’s needed.
I once watched a session derail completely because the least technical person in the room asked, “I won’t pretend to follow all of that… but how will you actually do that in parallel?” That question stopped everyone cold. It also saved the team months of confident misalignment.
That wasn’t disruption. That was clarity, surfacing through the noise.
On preparation (and its limits)…
I’ve seen fantastic facilitators toss the agenda mid-meeting, because something real emerged partway through. Something worth following that led to the first moments of clarity. Something that invalidated weeks of prep.
Don’t get me wrong, preparation matters.
But when you bring answers into a room meant for exploration, you rob the session of its purpose - like tossing a hooked fish in the water and expecting it to come back a shark.
The real preparation happens upstream, in conversation with the people closest to the work. The ones who rarely get invited to shape the agenda. The ones with real insight, and no platform to voice it.
If you’re not listening there, you’re not prepared for, or building, clarity - you’re just exerting control.
What clarity actually feels like…
Clarity is not consensus or confidence. It’s not a deck, or a tidy set of next steps.
Clarity is discomfort, held with energy. It generates better questions. It invites challenge. It disrupts what’s too smooth, too soon. If everyone leaves thinking, “That went well,” but no one leaves stretched, unsettled, or quietly motivated, then what you had was affirmation… not clarity.
Real clarity is messy.
It’s a sandbox, not a war room.
But people are terrified of the fuzzy space. They want structure, certainty, the performance of control. So strategy sessions become one-and-done moments when they should be loops. Try, test, throw things out, bring them back.
You’re not going back to zero.
You’re building clarity in layers… even if it doesn’t show up on paper.
You’ll know it’s working when…
You feel a momentum shift.
You hear it in the hallway chatter, not the minutes. Someone sketches something unprompted on a whiteboard. A side conversation lights up.
That’s clarity in motion.
It spreads. It energises. And it doesn’t need a slide to prove it happened.
If you shape the room, listen differently
The real work isn’t getting everyone into the room. It’s making sure they know they’re allowed to speak, and that what they say will matter.
So, if I had the chance to say just one thing to the people shaping those rooms, it would be this:
Leave your ego at the door. You might know the least about what’s really going on… and that’s not a flaw. It’s the best reason to listen.
Clarity asks all of us, especially those with power, to listen differently. Especially to the quietest voice, when they say the uncomfortable thing. And especially when it interrupts the narrative.
Because that’s often where the real clarity lives.
And once you hear it… you can’t unhear it.
Curious where to begin?
Start here.
Ask a question you weren’t planning to ask.
Or speak to someone who rarely gets the floor.
Not to tick the box, but to surface what you’ve been missing.
And when something uncomfortable shows up… don’t fix it.
Sit with it. Let it breathe. Let the room change shape around it.
You might just find: the thing that derails the session is usually the thing that saves it.
At Zivana, we design strategy engagements that prioritise momentum over theatre.
Not because it’s easy — but because it works.