The Safety of the Spreadsheet

I often find myself contradicting my own disdain for these things. Last week, I spent 6 hours drawing a detailed diagram for a garden I want to plant next spring. I mapped out the sunlight, the soil pH, and the companion planting for 26 different species. I felt like a god of the topsoil. Then, 6 days later, I realized I’d ignored the fact that the neighborhood deer treat my yard like an all-you-can-eat buffet and that I don’t actually like kale as much as my diagram suggested. I am just as guilty of seeking the safety of the spreadsheet. It is easier to color in a box than it is to actually dig a hole in the dirt. We build these plans because we are afraid of the dirt. We are afraid of the messiness of actual execution.

In the corporate boardroom, this fear is magnified by a factor of 86. The consultants know this. They sell the ‘Vision 2030’ deck not as a guide, but as a sedative. They use words like ‘ecosystem’ to make a failing retail chain sound like a rainforest. They use ‘digital transformation’ to describe the act of finally using a cloud-based calendar. It’s a linguistic sleight of hand that keeps the stakeholders from asking why the customer service line has a 46-minute hold time. We are so busy looking at the horizon that we are tripping over the furniture in the room.

Building What Actually Exists

But there is a profound difference between a performative plan and a tangible reality. It’s the difference between reading a brochure about a vacation and actually feeling the sun on your face. When we stop trying to ‘platformize’ our human experiences and start building things that actually exist in three dimensions, the air changes. You see this in the way a well-built structure catches the light. There is a weight to it, a permanence that a 76-slide deck can never replicate. When you’re tired of the abstract, you look for something you can touch, like the structural integrity of Sola Spaces where the light is the only thing that isn’t measured in a spreadsheet. It is a physical manifestation of a choice, not a theoretical projection of a trend.

The Moment of Truth

I remember a meeting where a department head stood up and admitted he hadn’t read the last 46 pages of the strategy guide. There was a gasp, as if he’d admitted to not believing in gravity. But then, one by one, others confessed. They’d looked at the charts, sure. They’d memorized the three core pillars. But the actual substance? The 126 action items? They were ignored. Instead, people were just doing what Sky G. does: they were looking at the person in front of them and trying to solve the problem of the next 26 minutes. They were being ‘strategic’ by ignoring the ‘strategy.’ It was the most honest moment I’ve ever seen in a corporate setting. It was the moment the fitted sheet finally fell off the bed and we all just sat on the mattress.

Courage in the Chaos

We should probably admit that the 6-year plan is a ritual, like a rain dance. It makes us feel like we’re doing something about the weather, even though the clouds don’t care about our PowerPoint animations. The best leaders I’ve known aren’t the ones who can project a 46% growth rate a decade from now; they are the ones who can look at a messy, lumpy, un-foldable situation and say, ‘Okay, what’s the one thing we can do right now that isn’t a lie?’

I still haven’t figured out how to fold that sheet. It’s sitting in a ball in the back of my closet, right next to a printed copy of a 6-year business plan I wrote back in 2016. Both of them are equally useless for their intended purpose, but at least the sheet is soft. There is a certain dignity in acknowledging the lumpy parts of our work and our lives. When we stop pretending that we have 2030 figured out, we finally have the energy to deal with the 46 emails that actually matter today. We can stop performing and start building. We can stop drawing the garden and start planting the seeds, even if the deer are already waiting. Strategy isn’t a document; it’s the courage to be present in the chaos without a script.

A Steady Table is the New Vision

Maybe the next time a consultant hands you a 76-page deck, you should just use it to prop up a table leg that’s a little bit wobbly. At least then, the plan is actually supporting something real. It’s solving a problem. It’s no longer theater; it’s a tool.

We don’t need more visions. We need more people who know how to hold the light while someone else finds their shoes. We need to stop planning for the end of the decade and start worrying about the next 26 minutes of someone else’s life. That is the only strategy that has ever actually changed the world.