Most organizations have a strategy. Hardly anyone lives it.

Dr. Samuel Huber is founder of the For Planet Strategy Lab and lecturer at the University of St. Gallen. He has observed across organizations of all sizes why strategy processes regularly end up unused; and what to do about it. His answer is not another framework. It starts with a precise distinction: when everything is clear and the recipe works, you need a plan. Strategy is what you need when the recipe stops working.

What a strategy needs to come alive: it must genuinely understand the organization's own context, not copy someone else's. It must be built participatively; sensemaking with many, decision-making with few. It must be prototyped before it is published; the more fragile the prototype looks, the more honest the feedback. And it must be embedded in the routines of the organization. Not in a workshop. In daily life.

Humans have habits. Organizations have routines.

The uncomfortable part: almost no strategy includes the planet as a stakeholder. Samuel argues this is not an ecological oversight; it is a strategic one. Ignoring ecosystems, social systems and long-term environmental dynamics means building on an incomplete picture. Incomplete pictures produce blind spots. The Rotterdam example shows what becomes possible when that changes: better arguments for public funding, stronger connection to the city, a completely new business line.

The conversation does not end with a clean resolution. It ends with an honest tension: how do you act inside a system built for growth when you believe that system is not enough? Samuel's answer: you can make money for the planet without being a nonprofit. It is not an either-or question. It is a design question.

In this conversation you'll learn:

- when a plan is enough and when you actually need strategy

- the four conditions for a living strategy: context, participation, prototyping, routines

- why prototyping is the most underestimated step in any strategy process

- how much time your team really invests in the future; and how much it should

- the planet as a stakeholder; what it means in practice and what it produces

- how ownership and accountability come apart; and what that means for transformation

- what you can do concretely different starting tomorrow

Timestamps:

00:00 — Intro

01:04 — What design really means; beyond marketing and aesthetics

04:58 — What strategy actually is; and why almost everyone gets it wrong

13:33 — When you don't need a strategy; and when you do

16:28 — Why strategies fail; the four conditions for a living strategy

24:42 — Organizational change: why routines matter more than workshops

25:29 — The planet as a stakeholder; why this is rational, not idealistic

34:19 — Profit and sustainability: can they coexist?

40:24 — Why the new entrepreneurial question is: how few did you hire?

51:04 — 3 questions for better strategy; that you can ask tomorrow

55:59 — Strategy is a direction, not a plan