Wishful thinking isn’t a strategy. Here’s what is.

From vision boards to action plans: Why optimism alone won’t move the needle

I’d like to think one of my strengths is knowing when something just won’t work. Not always ( I’m not a delusional Donald Trump) but often enough to trust my gut. I interrogate ideas, I pressure-test assumptions. And I’ve got a decent track record of being right.

But more than once, I’ve been told I “lack ambition”, that I need to “take my black hat off”, or “get on board with the vision”. Apparently, calling out cracks in a plan is a vibe-killer.

Here’s the thing — I’m not a pessimist, I’m a pragmatist. When I see a strong idea, I’m all in. Energised, vocal, sleeves rolled up. But when something feels shaky, I’ll say that too. Loudly, if needed.

Too often though, I feel like the kid in The Emperor’s New Clothes, pointing out the obvious –  “He’s naked!”, only to be told I’m the one lacking imagination.

I’ve seen this play out more times than I’d like. A leadership team, staring at stagnating returns, demands something new. Someone suggests a product, a market, a new direction, a completely fabricated but appealing sales forecast. A few PowerPoint decks are drawn up, including a hockey stick graph, a sketch or two. A veneer of market research. Everyone nods, even those who aren’t convinced, in fear of looking like a party pooper. But six months later, the charts look flat. What looked like momentum was just motion.

That’s not strategy, that’s wishful thinking.

In this post, I want to unpack how optimism and ambition differ from real strategic thinking. I’ll share a story from my time client-side, where a product got willed into existence through sheer desperation, not discipline. It bombed. And there were lessons worth sharing.

The temptation of hope-driven strategy

When existing products plateau, the impulse is to innovate. Fast. Leaders want answers yesterday. And the team, eager to please, rallies behind an idea with just enough surface logic to sound strategic. But speed and positivity can mask risk. They can paper over weak assumptions and ignore inconvenient truths.

We fall into this trap because optimism feels good. It’s easier to get funding, alignment, and executive buy-in for a big, bold idea than it is to say, “We don’t have enough data yet.” But hope without a plan is not a strategy. It’s a gamble dressed in enthusiasm.

A product doomed before it launched

A while back I joined a well-known FMCG company with an incredibly strong core line of products. But like many, they were desperate to diversify. The prize in NPD is always big — and the pressure matched it. When I arrived, one new product was already deep into development. To my newbie eye, it made no sense. Still, everyone else seemed so positive, I kept quiet… for a bit.

This wasn’t an incremental innovation. It was attempting to create an entirely new category,  something very, very few FMCG products ever pull off. Uber often gets cited as an example of “category creation,” but I’d argue it simply adapted existing behaviour. People were already getting taxis; Uber just reframed the experience. Red Bull is another classic case often mentioned, credited with creating the energy drink category. But again, were they really inventing, or just repackaging? People were already drinking carbonated, caffeine-filled drinks. Red Bull simply sharpened the positioning and story. My point: adapting behaviour is one thing. Asking consumers to embrace entirely new behaviour is something else altogether. And that was red flag number one.

As I settled in and immersed myself in the market, my spidey senses tingled further:

• No research: Nothing had been tested with consumers.
• No go-to-market plan: Even supermarkets didn’t know where it would sit on shelves.
• No shelf presence: At less than 10cm tall, it was invisible at a glance.
• A somewhat sycophantic culture that didn’t embrace any counter views

Meanwhile, the team were polishing packaging — something they did brilliantly — but it was glitter on a turd.

Eventually, I spoke up: “Have we actually put this in front of consumers?” Blank stares told me everything. With my research background, I pushed for proper testing. To their credit, they did it — but only as a token gesture. Poorly funded, poorly executed, and ultimately pointless. The few small focus groups became a box-tick exercise. Respondents, sensing what was expected, simply echoed back what the team wanted to hear.

The product launched anyway. It bombed. Not because the execution was off, but because the very premise never held water. It was built on shaky assumptions, blind optimism, and research used like a drunk uses a lamppost: not for illumination, but to prop itself up.

What I could have done differently

Simply being the one who says “I told you so” isn’t much use. In hindsight, I should have gone further than raising concerns, I should have proposed real solutions, not just suggested a few token focus group. As I wasn’t in the product team, I didn’t want to be seen to be straying too far out of my lane, but evaluating something with fresh eyes from a different perspective is incredibly useful. It’s all too easy to miss the woods for the trees when you’re in the project team.

I’ve always believed the ultimate test of consumer appeal is to let people vote with their wallets. It’s not always easy to do, but in this case, it actually could have been. We had a staff shop where everyone received a free monthly allowance of the brand’s products. We could have quietly added the new product to that mix and tracked how many people chose it over their usual favourites.

Sure, that wouldn’t perfectly replicate the real world, staff are naturally partisan and already familiar with the product concept, but if it couldn’t win over our own people, there was little hope it would win over anyone else.

We didn’t run that test. But if we had, it would have told us what we later learned the hard way. Once the product hit shelves, it was added to the staff shop, and no one wanted it. It became so unpopular that it was difficult even to give away. I still have a kitchen cupboard full of the stuff three years later.

What real strategy looks like

So, what separates hope from strategy?

1. Clear choices and trade-offs

Strategy is about deciding what you will and won’t do. It’s not a wishlist. It’s a commitment to a direction, with eyes wide open about the constraints, challenges and consequences.

2. Tested assumptions

You don’t build and launch before you test. You validate your riskiest assumptions early. That might be through prototypes, pilots, or even simple conversations with real customers. Strategy starts where reality checks begin.

3. Measurable, impact-driven goals

If you’re not measuring impact, you’re guessing. And if your metrics aren’t linked to business outcomes, they’re just noise. Real strategy connects actions to measurable change.

4. Regular review and course correction

Strategy isn’t one and done. It’s alive. It needs review cycles, feedback loops, and the humility to pivot. A strategy that can’t flex is just another form of denial.

Spot the Difference

How to shift from hope to strategy

• Map your assumptions. Rank them by risk. Design small tests to validate them.
• Ask better questions: not “Can we build this?” but “Should we?”
• Create decision gates, points where you must stop, assess, and decide to continue or pivot.
• Reward learning, not just outcomes. Failure isn’t the enemy, delusion is.
• Don’t just ask if people say they’d buy or use it, find ways to see if they will. Real behaviour beats hypothetical enthusiasm every time.

Final thought

Vision boards are great. Optimism is essential. But they only take you so far. A real strategy bridges the gap between ambition and execution. It’s grounded in evidence, shaped by constraints, and built for impact.

The next time someone says, “Let’s just get something out there,” stop and ask: is this strategy, or just wishful thinking with a deadline?

Author: Mark Benjamin

Strategy Director