Elate

⚡ INTRODUCING INSIGHTS ⚡ The automated risk assessment tool that enables strategy leaders to uncover risks, take action, and hit their operating targets. 🎯 Reduce risks, maximize results with Insights. Learn more at https://lnkd.in/gDdUT3Zq today.

Why did we build Insights? Strategy and operations leaders face a significant challenge in identifying potential risks and blockers within their strategy before they become costly setbacks. 💢 Organizations build these large, complex plans—often scattered across spreadsheets, slide decks, and word docs that quickly become outdated. ⌛ This fragmentation makes it nearly impossible to dive into your plan and spot areas of weakness.  Where do you even start? 🤔 And how can you make sense of information that hasn’t been updated in… how long? This results in a reactive approach to strategy execution. What was once a manageable risk has become an off-track objective—a costly setback that could have been avoided but now demands time and resources to correct. This ⤴️ is why we built Insights. To identify these bends before they become breaks. With Insights, you’ll experience a healthier, more connected strategy. It’s a powerful feature that boosts your success rate and empowers you to go further, faster. That’s the power of Insights.

✈ After meeting with Strategy and Operations Leaders in Kansas City, Chicago, and London the past few weeks, one thing became clear: strategic planning is always top of mind, whether times are good or tough. Some companies are thriving, wondering if they should keep their foot on the gas. Others are struggling, not wanting to revisit plans when the outlook seems bleak. But no matter where your business stands, now is the time to recommit to your strategy. Why? Because: ⚡ When things are going well, a strong plan helps you accelerate further. 💪 When challenges arise, it helps you recover faster. 2025 is just around the corner, and the best way to prepare is by ensuring your leadership team stays focused, revisits the plan, and aligns around priorities. Keep chopping wood, stay focused, and build a structure that empowers your teams to thrive in any season. Welcome to The Pulse. #strategicplanning

LET’S REVIEW HOW WE DID LAST WEEK Is wasted time in Executive Leadership Team meetings. Understanding performance is critical for decision-making. So you can focus on removing hurdles and getting teams back on track. And you have a dedicated time and space to do so with the ELT. Yet it’s mostly spent doing roll-call, recapping “what’s happened”. Automate a pre-read with key wins, focus areas, operating plan metrics, and objective statuses. Now everyone is aligned ahead of time. And the focus will shift from sharing yesterday’s news to helping teams succeed.

"We have a weekly cadence as an executive team, and I'm able to start that meeting every week, looking at an Elate dashboard and highlighting those objectives that we need to be spending most time on. It's really become the foundation of how we run that meeting, and it's been very effective." We sat down with Lou Desiderio, Strategy Advisor and former COO at FormAssembly, to get his thoughts on his experience with Elate. 💙 One of the key areas Lou highlights is how Elate helped transform FormAssembly’s leadership meetings from reactive updates to proactive strategy sessions. 💥 Too often, leadership meetings get bogged down by status updates—reviewing last week’s numbers, completed projects, or things that are off-track. But these meetings should be about action: removing blockers, doubling down on what works, and shifting from a static to a proactive approach. And that's the power of Elate. - Thanks for sharing your experience with us, Lou! #strategicplanning #planningseason #strategyexecution

Want to run better, more effective Leadership Meetings? 🤔 If you answered "yes", this event is for you. Join us next Tuesday for the final session of Blueprint Live, where we’ll sit down with Lou Desiderio, Strategic Advisor and former COO at FormAssembly, to learn how top teams turn Leadership Meetings into proactive, results-oriented discussions with Elate. Details and registration can be found below. ⤵

Building off of yesterday's project management vs. strategic planning discussion... Are You Tracking Too Many Tactics? One of the most common challenges Strategy and Operations Leaders face is figuring out if they have too many Tactics in play. 🎯 How to tell? It comes down to distinguishing between everyday tasks and actions that actually move the needle toward your strategic goals. For example, if your objective is to increase revenue by creating a new sales playbook, your Tactic could be “Develop sales playbook.” What it shouldn't be is breaking that down into micro-tasks like "Draft playbook" or "Send for approval." 💡 Pro tip: Keep the strategic plan high level—your exec team doesn’t want to know every single task. They care about which efforts are moving the needle and whether they’re on pace or behind. Remember, it's better to start with fewer Tactics and adjust as needed. Adding too many can lead to unnecessary oversight, burnout, and eventually... a dusty plan collecting cobwebs on a shelf. 🚫 H/T April McDonald Abby Parker 👏 #strategicplanning #projectmanagement #strategysnacks

🚨 Project Management ≠ Strategic Planning 🚨 Too often, we see organizations blur the lines between project management and strategic planning. While both are crucial, they serve different purposes—and confusing them can lead to a cluttered, siloed approach that lacks true business impact. 💼 Project Management: It's about tasks, milestones, and getting from point A to point B. Focused and action-oriented, but sometimes too granular when viewed through a strategic lens. 🎯 Strategic Planning: This is your big-picture vision. It's cross-functional and long-term, aligning teams across the company. When we mistake project tasks for strategy, we end up with long lists of objectives—but without real clarity on what success looks like. As Abby Parker shares, the key is bringing these two together in a way that makes sense. Keeping them distinct but connected ensures you understand not just what you're doing, but how it's impacting your business. 📊 The goal? Clear objectives, measurable outcomes, and the ability to pivot if things aren't going as planned. As we focus on 2025, let’s stop checking off boxes and start achieving meaningful results. #strategicplanning #projectmanagement #strategysnack

This time of year we get to work with countless Strategy and Operations Leaders as they try to ensure delivery on 2024 Strategy, while looking towards 2025 Planning. Yet, one of the biggest challenges is how to uncover unseen risk in their strategy. Both while the Plan is in motion, as well as when it is being built. Organizations build these massive, audacious plans—often scattered across different formats with lagging data—and spotting risks before they become costly setbacks feels nearly impossible for most. This challenge is something we've been thinking about at Elate since we built the company. How can we surface these risks for Strategy and Operations leaders before it’s too late? And more importantly, how can we empower leaders to take action on those risks to keep moving forward? Well, I’m *elated* to share that we’ve come up with a solution: Insights. Set to be released at the end of October, Insights will automatically surface potential risks, giving leaders the ability to see around corners, avoid costly setbacks, and take action when it matters most. Next Tuesday, we’re hosting a sneak-peak into the release of Insights. For those Strategy and Operations Leaders interested, we'd love to have you join us to see what our team will be rolling out in a few weeks. You can find the registration details on the Elate LinkedIn page or the comments below!