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The Business Plan Is Dead. Long Live the Planning.

Why the document lost. Why the discipline won. And what growth-stage companies are doing now.

I have always sought different Points of View or alternative thinking focused on fast growth. And the art of planning has come to the forefront in today’s challenges. I was reminded that eight years ago, I wrote a piece asking whether the business plan was really dead. My answer then was measured: it depends on the company, the stage, and the audience. One size does not fit all. Use the format that fits.

That answer was right in 2018. It is incomplete in 2026. What alternative thinking is evolving today?

The world has changed so fast—and so structurally—that the old debate (long plan vs. short plan, formal vs. lean) now misses the point entirely. The question is no longer what format your plan can take. The question is whether any static plan can survive first contact with reality.

The 2018 Debate: Format Wars

Back then, the “business plans are dead” crowd made a process argument. Planning takes too much time. It costs too much. Strategies are short-lived. The lean startup camp offered an alternative: ditch the 50-page binder and use a one-page canvas instead—the Business Model Canvas.

Fair enough. But both sides were still debating the container, not the contents.

What Changed: The Ground Moved

Between 2018 and today, a series of disruptions turned the planning landscape upside down. A global pandemic shredded three-year forecasts overnight. Supply chains fractured and re-formed. Interest rates whipsawed. Trade policy became a moving target. And AI went from a curiosity to a force reshaping business models in real time.

For growth-stage companies in the $2M to $15M range, the impact has been acute. We cannot absorb disruption the way a Fortune 500 company can. We do not have the luxury of a dedicated strategy team or a six-month planning horizon. But we also cannot afford to fly blind.

PwC’s 2024 Global CEO Survey found that nearly half of CEOs believe their companies will not be viable in ten years on their current path. That is not a statistic about bad strategy. It is a statistic about the speed of change outpacing the speed of response.

Eisenhower Had It Right

Dwight Eisenhower, the man who planned D-Day, said something that business leaders should tattoo on the inside of their eyelids: “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.”

Read that again. The man who orchestrated the most complex military operation in history did not trust plans. He trusted planning—the discipline, the thinking, the preparation that builds the muscle to adapt when the plan falls apart.

That distinction is the whole game in 2026.

From Plan-as-Document to Planning-as-Discipline

Here is what I see working for growth-stage companies right now. The winners have stopped treating planning as an annual event and started treating it as a continuous discipline. They have replaced the big reveal with a steady rhythm. They are not predicting the future. They are building the capacity to respond to it.

What does this look like in practice? It means quarterly planning cycles, not annual ones. It means short execution sprints—typically 90 days—with clear accountability and measurable outcomes. It means asking three questions every quarter: What changed since last quarter? What must be true for our current strategy to work? And what are we going to do in the next 90 days to move the needle?

It means your strategic framework fits on one or two pages—not because brevity is trendy, but because a framework you can see in its entirety is a framework your whole team can execute.

The AI Irony

Here is the great irony of 2026. AI can now generate a polished, 30-page business plan in ten minutes. Financial projections, competitive analysis, market sizing—all formatted and footnoted. The document has never been easier to produce.

And it has never been less valuable.

Because the document was never the point. The thinking was the point. The hard conversations about where your profit zone is moving, how your customer is changing, and what you are willing to say no to—that is the work that matters. AI cannot do that for you. AI can accelerate your research. It can model scenarios. It can surface data you would have missed. But the strategic judgment, the clarity about what matters most, still belongs to you and your leadership team.

Use AI to make your planning discipline faster. Do not use it to skip the discipline entirely.

Clarity Is Still the Prime Directive

In 2018, I wrote that clarity trumps format. That has not changed. What has changed is the cost of not having it. In a stable environment, unclear strategy means you grow a little slower than you might. In a volatile environment, unclear strategy means you react to every headline, chase every shiny object, and exhaust your team in the process.

Clarity on how your customer is changing. Clarity on where your profit zone is moving. Clarity on your best-fit business model. Clarity on how to win. That is still the Prime Directive. And it is delivered through the discipline of regular, rigorous strategic thinking—not through a binder on a shelf.

Here’s My Take

The business plan—the document—is dead. It probably should have died sooner. But planning—the verb, the discipline, the quarterly habit of strategic thinking connected to execution—is more alive and more essential than it has ever been.

The companies that will thrive through the uncertainty of 2026 and beyond are the ones that plan continuously, execute in 90-day sprints, and never confuse the map for the territory.

Eisenhower knew it. Now you do too.