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What's Next? The Leader’s Playbook
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02Play · the two stances

The situation“I'm writing next quarter's plan and last quarter's didn't land.”

This is a choice between two stances. Work out whether you've lost the room or lost the plot — whether it's your credibility that needs repair or the numbers you were steering by that turned out wrong — then make the matching Play.

Play A

Put your own skin in the new plan

the plan was fine on paper and you wore the failure.

Play B

Present three stories from the ground

the plan wasn't fine.

Each positions you differently for the next conversation. You choose.

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Play A

Put your own skin in the new plan

the plan was fine on paper and you wore the failure. The numbers were sensible, the targets reachable, the execution slipped just enough that the result didn't land the way the plan said it would. Your credibility took the hit even though the plan, in the abstract, was fine.

If that's the trap, open the new plan by naming what you got wrong last quarter. In plain language. Before anyone else gets to name it for you. Not a performance of humility. A specific admission. People trust people who can describe their own mistakes accurately, and they stop trusting people who can't.

After Nassim Taleb on skin in the game.

Play B

Present three stories from the ground

the plan wasn't fine. The metrics you were optimising for turned out to be measuring the wrong thing. You hit your targets and the business still moved against you, because the targets weren't the right targets.

If that's the trap, put the spreadsheets away. Present the new plan as three short stories from the ground. Not forecasts. Observations. The predictive models that failed you last quarter will fail you again if you build the next plan with them, and a story that's true beats a model that's wrong.

After C. Thi Nguyen on objectivity laundering.

Each positions you differently for the next conversation. You choose.

§Sources & further reading

Play

Plan

Precedent

Further reading

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