How I Approach Building Plans That Drive Commercial Value

I get some version of this question in almost every conversation about a new opportunity: how would you approach this? This is my answer — the framework I use when building a plan to drive commercial and enterprise value, independent of industry, company size, or which function I happen to be sitting in at the time.

The Executive Premise

I start from a different premise: enterprise value is created by the interaction of capabilities across an organization, not by any single function working in isolation. In a complex matrix organization, that value depends on skilled collaboration across functions as much as it depends on any one function’s execution — and seeing that requires the ability to work across boundaries, not necessarily sitting at the top of any specific one of them. My focus is identifying where capability is constrained, where value is leaking between functions, and where investment will create durable competitive advantage rather than only short-term lift.

Seven Principles That Guide the Work

1. Enterprise Value First Not every plan needs to answer the same questions. Long-range, enterprise-level plans have to answer three: Does it create enterprise value? Does it reduce strategic risk? Does it strengthen long-term organizational capability? Quarterly functional plans — a stronger campaign, a faster process, a tighter funnel — are judged on a different, more immediate bar: are they moving the business forward this quarter? Both are necessary for sustainable growth. The discipline is knowing which lens applies to which plan, and making sure the near-term wins are building toward the enterprise questions rather than running in a separate lane from them.

2. Observe Before Prescribing Initial conversations should produce observations and hypotheses, not definitive recommendations on day one. A disciplined assessment validates assumptions before capital gets committed — moving fast on the wrong hypothesis is more expensive than moving deliberately on the right one.

3. Capability Before Strategy Most organizations already know what they want to achieve. What determines whether that strategy becomes reality is operating capability — leadership, governance, talent, technology, decision-making, and data quality. I look at capability first, because strategy without it is just a wish list.

4. Knowledge as an Enterprise Asset Institutional knowledge is an enterprise asset, not a byproduct of individual tenure. Structured documentation, decision intelligence, and thoughtful use of AI can preserve organizational memory, accelerate onboarding, improve succession planning, reduce dependence on any one executive, and strengthen resilience through change.

5. Commercial Capability as One System Marketing, sales, customer experience, partnerships, and service create more value when they’re treated as one commercial system rather than isolated departmental goals competing for the same budget and the same customer’s attention. That alignment doesn’t necessarily require one person owning all functions — it requires someone willing to work the seams between them, translate priorities across boundaries, and keep the whole system pointed at the same outcome.

6. Digital Infrastructure in Service of Decisions I evaluate technology investments by their ability to improve decision quality, customer experience, organizational learning, and well-defined workflow execution — not simply by the automation or efficiency gains they promise. A tool that makes an organization faster at the wrong thing isn’t progress.

7. Strategic Optionality Healthy organizations retain the ability to scale, integrate acquisitions, withstand leadership transitions, attract capital, and adapt to changing markets. I weight recommendations toward preserving and expanding that flexibility.

How This Plays Out: A Five-Stage Sequence

This is the sequence I follow — a disciplined progression, not a predetermined set of answers delivered on day one.

1. Observe. Understand the enterprise context before forming a point of view.
2. Assess. Structure that observation into a clear-eyed view of capability and constraint.
3. Validate. Test hypotheses against real data before committing capital or organizational energy.
4. Design. Build the blueprint once the hypothesis holds up.
5. Enable. Put the capability, governance, and change management in place to make the design real.

What This Looks Like in Practice

In practice, this rarely starts with a finished plan. It starts with a small, concrete illustration — often built from nothing more than public information and a handful of early conversations — that shows how I’d think about a specific problem, not a claim that I’ve already solved it.

That first pass usually reflects Principles 1 and 5 most visibly: it starts from observed dynamics rather than a predetermined tactic list, and it treats the functions involved as one connected system rather than separate initiatives competing for attention. The next step is always the same regardless of the situation: validate those early observations against the organization’s actual data before treating any of them as settled. That’s an invitation for the team’s input, not a claim that the first draft is already right.

The Questions I Bring to the Table

These are the questions I keep in view across every conversation, regardless of which function we’re discussing in the moment:

• Where is enterprise value being created today?
• Where is value leaking because capabilities are fragmented?
• What knowledge leaves the organization when a key leader departs?
• What capabilities need to exist three years from now that don’t exist today?
• What investments create enduring value, rather than short-term performance?

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This is the lens I bring to every plan I build. If you’re working through a similar question — how to unlock enterprise value across a complex organization — I’d welcome the conversation.

— Jourdan Hathaway