In what executives are calling a “decisive step forward,” a newly convened Strategic Planning Committee has unveiled an ambitious roadmap for developing the strategic framework that will guide the planning of its future strategy, a milestone that internal documents describe as “approximately the second phase of phase one.”

The committee, composed of seventeen senior leaders selected for their proven ability to attend recurring meetings without visible distress, met for three full days at an offsite retreat to align on the methodology that will be used to align on the methodology for the alignment work to come.

“We are not yet planning,” the committee chair clarified during the opening session, while distributing a 142-page deck titled Planning the Plan: A Pre-Strategic Framework for Strategic Pre-Framework Development. “We are planning to plan. The plan itself remains in scope for a subsequent committee, the formation of which is itself part of the current planning effort.”

Sources familiar with the proceedings report that the first day was devoted to defining what the word “strategic” would mean for the purposes of the committee’s work, a question that produced seven competing definitions and a recommendation that a working group be formed to consolidate them into a single definition by the third quarter.

The working group, which has since been convened, has reportedly subdivided into three sub-working-groups, each tasked with developing a portion of the eventual definition. A meta-working-group has been established to coordinate the output of the three sub-working-groups, with a charter that is being drafted by a fourth group whose composition is still being finalized.

Day two of the offsite reportedly focused on the development of a “strategic vocabulary,” a glossary of approved terms that committee members will use when discussing strategy. The list, which is still in draft form, includes the words synergy, alignment, cross-functional, holistic, enterprise-wide, value proposition, and journey, each accompanied by definitions that one attendee described as “circular in a way I found almost soothing.”

The third day was devoted to discussing the structure of the report that will be issued at the conclusion of the planning of the planning. The committee voted unanimously to commission an external consultant to advise on the structure of the report, with the consultant selection process itself to be guided by a separate committee whose terms of reference are currently being scoped.

Internal critics, of whom there are reportedly none willing to be quoted, have privately suggested that the entire exercise might be expedited by simply writing the strategy. The committee has acknowledged this suggestion in the meeting minutes and has scheduled a session to evaluate it as part of the broader review of alternative methodologies, which will be conducted after the methodology for evaluating methodologies has been finalized.

The committee’s preliminary timeline projects that an initial strategic framework will be available for executive review by the end of the next fiscal year, at which point a separate process will be initiated to translate the framework into a strategy. Implementation of the strategy is anticipated to begin two years after the strategy itself has been finalized, pending the formation of the Implementation Planning Committee, which will report to the Strategic Planning Committee through a liaison group still to be named.

In a statement issued at the close of the offsite, the committee expressed satisfaction with its progress and noted that, while the work ahead remains substantial, the team is fully aligned on the importance of remaining fully aligned. A follow-up offsite has been scheduled for the autumn to plan the second phase of the planning of the planning, which is expected to include the development of a sub-strategy for documenting the strategy of the strategic planning process.

The committee has confirmed it will continue meeting weekly until further notice, or until the question of what it is meeting about has been satisfactorily resolved through the appropriate strategic channels.