A PLANNING PROCESS FOR LEADERSHIP TEAMS
Your plans get delivered, even when things go wrong.
War Games teaches your leadership team a planning process they keep using, so when conditions change, your people adjust and still deliver the objective.
The plan is the smallest part of what your team needs.
Planning usually ends with a document that reads well and that everyone in the room agrees with, and then the work starts.
A few weeks in, something the document didn't account for shows up, like a supplier missing a date or a hire falling through, and every plan meets something of that kind eventually.
What decides whether your organization keeps moving is whether the planning produced these five things.
1
The options that were considered and set aside
When the chosen path stalls, your team has no idea what the alternatives were or why they lost, so they start from nothing.
2
The assumptions the plan rests on, written down as assumptions
Nobody notices when one of them stops being true, because nobody knew the plan depended on it.
3
The risks, with a response already decided for each one
The first surprise becomes a meeting about what to do, instead of somebody doing it.
4
The handoffs between teams, and the signal that starts each one
Work waits at the edges between departments while each side assumes the other is moving.
5
Decision rights during delivery
Your people escalate things they could have settled, and settle things they should have escalated, and both cost you
Planning that produces those five things gives your leaders what they need to keep the work moving when conditions change.
Planning is the work. The plan is just the record of it.
Most of what makes planning valuable lives in what your leaders worked out along the way, which is far more than a document can hold.
What real planning means
Building more than one way to reach the objective, and comparing them honestly.
Saying out loud what you're assuming.
Finding what could go wrong while there's still time to decide what you'd do about it.
Agreeing where work moves between teams.
Settling who can decide what once the work is live
What your leaders can then do
Recognize which assumption just stopped being true.
Reach for what was considered instead, and know why it lost.
Act on the contingency the team already agreed.
Know whether this one is theirs to settle or yours.
Keep the work moving without waiting for a meeting.
The plan on the page gets edited, and the objective still gets delivered.
Military teams plan this way because they expect the plan to change.
Military planning exists to produce people who can keep acting once conditions change, so every assumption gets labelled, every risk gets a response, every handoff gets a signal, and everyone knows what they can decide without asking first.
Kyle Anderson, our co-founder, planned this way in Tier 1 Special Operations and brought the process into LoyaltyOps. We adapted it for the objectives a leadership team is working on and the pace of a growing organization.
Five rules carry over, and they're what make it work in your organization too.
Define the objective before designing anything.
Build two or three separate, complete routes to the same objective.
Walk the plan through live before the work starts.
Work inside time limits, so the thinking stays sharp.
Decide once, and commit.
What your leaders learn to do.
1 Framing
Your leadership team agrees on the objective, the limits, and what a good looks like.
An objective your team can repeat back without you.
2 Briefing
Everyone hears that same framing together, in the same room, at the same time.
One shared starting point.
3 Building Courses of Action
Small teams work separately, and each one builds a course of action to achieve the objective with its own assumptions, risks and trade-offs.
Real alternatives you can compare.
4 Deciding
Each team presents its course of action, and you pick one and explain the reasoning in front of everyone.
A decision that holds, because the reasoning is public.
5 Refining
The people closest to the detail test the assumptions and close the gaps in the chosen route.
A plan your team can actually execute.
6 Ownership
Your team walks the plan phase by phase and settles who owns each part, where the handoffs are, and who decides what.
Every part of the plan has a name against it.
7 Rehersal
Your team reherses the plan in sequence before any work starts, testing the timing and each handoff.
Confusion found early, while it still costs nothing.
8 Review
Once the work is done, your team compares what was meant to happen with what did, and works out why they differed and what they learned.
Planning that improves the team behind it.
What's different once your leaders plan this way.
When something changes, your people adjust and keep going, because they know what the plan was built on.
Problems get handled instead of scheduled, because the response was already decided.
Work stops waiting at the handoffs between teams, because each one has an owner and a signal.
Decisions that your leaders could have made stop coming back to you, and the ones that should reach you arrive sooner.
Decisions stay decided, because everyone heard the reasoning when it was made.
Your leaders plan this way on their own next time, and the planning gets better each round.
Four ways to bring the process into your organization.
Planning workshop
TWO HOURS OR CUSTOM DURATION
Your leaders learn the process and the tools behind it, with practice built in, so they can start using it on their own work.
Best for organizations putting a group of leaders through development, or a leadership team that wants to learn the method before committing to the full engagement, at any group size, either virtually or onsite.
Team building session
HALF DAY OR FULL DAY
Your leaders run a condensed version of the process on a scenario, with competing teams, and finish with a decision and a debrief on how they worked. They practice every step and learn how their team plans under time pressure, while the outcome remains a training exercise.
Best for leaders who want a day that builds the team and teaches something they can use the following week, at any group size, working in teams, either virtually or onsite.
WHERE MOST TEAMS START
War Games: Two day facilitated onsite
LEARN IT, THEN USE IT
Day one teaches your team the process in detail. Day two runs the process through a scenario, all the way through to ownership and rehearsal. Leaders learn and can make mistakes with nothing at risk.
Best for a leadership team that wants to build stronger planning capability. Best with 9 to 15 people in the room. Always onsite.
Facilitated planning session
ONE OR TWO DAYS
We facilitate the process on your objective and maintain discipline while your team does the planning. Annual planning, quarterly planning, or a decision that matters.
Best for leadership teams with a major objective who want expert support through the planning process. Annual planning, quarterly planning, or a high-stakes decision.
When a leadership team calls us for this
You have a major objective ahead, and you want your leadership team to own the plan for it.
Work that crosses departments keeps stalling at the handoffs between them.
Too much comes back to you that your leaders could settle themselves.
Last year's plan stopped working early, and your team waited for direction while it did.
Decisions get made and then reopened, and nobody can quite say who decided.
Your leaders are ready to think together, and the way they plan hasn't kept up with what you're asking of them.
Questions leaders ask before they book a call
Isn't this just strategic planning?
Strategic planning settles what your organization is going to do, and this is about how your leaders plan whatever they’re planning, and what that planning leaves them with once the work is live. Teams use the process on annual plans, on a market entry, on a system migration, and on a problem that has to be solved in a hurry.
Do you tell us what to decide?
No. Your leadership team frames the objective, your teams build the routes, and your decision-maker chooses, while we hold the process, the phase boundaries and the time. We’re a leadership development firm, and the value here sits in how your organization thinks its way to a decision, which is work your own people are better placed to do.
Who needs to be in the room for the two days?
Whoever makes the final decision needs to be there for both days, along with your executive leadership team, the functional leaders who would own parts of the plan, and a few of the people whose delivery experience you trust. Nine to fifteen works best, because the teams building routes need to be small enough that everyone in them is working.
Can we do this virtually?
The two days is always onsite, because the process depends on teams working in parallel in separate rooms and then briefing each other, and that falls apart over video. Workshops and team building sessions work well virtually.
What happens after?
Your team keeps the process, the templates and the phase checklists, and most teams run it themselves on the next objective. Some ask us back to facilitate when the objective is a large one, and that’s a facilitated planning session.
How is this different from ordinary team building?
Your leaders spend the day on a real planning problem in competing teams, so what they learn about each other comes out of working under time pressure together, and they leave with a method they can use the following week.
Every engagement starts with a 30-minute discovery call.
On the call we'll look at the objective your organization is planning for, work out which format fits your leadership team, and agree whether this is the right next step.
Contact Us
LoyaltyOps™ HQ
430 Hazeldean Road,
Unit #6, Suite 17
Kanata, Ontario, Canada
K2L 1T9
Email: [email protected]
Phone: 1 365-659-4720
Company
Copyright 2025 LoyaltyOps Inc. All Rights Reserved
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