The Challenge of Protecting Strategic Space in Executive Diaries - By Helen Chambers
Guest Blog: The Challenge of Protecting Strategic Space in Executive Diaries - written by Helen Chambers, Founder of Chambers Consulting.
This sounds like the beginning of a weak joke. “What’s the hardest thing a CEO does?” In a recent workshop on strategic thinking the group came up with the answer “Finding and protecting regular time for strategic thinking”. For many chief executives, the most persistent leadership challenge is not the absence of strategy, but the absence of time in which to engage with it. Organisational diaries are dominated by board cycles, funder requirements, staff issues, and a relentless stream of operational tasks. Within such a context, creating and safeguarding space for strategic reflection becomes an elusive practice.
This absence has significant implications. Without regular opportunities to interrogate assumptions, assess environmental shifts, and recalibrate organisational direction, leaders risk being consumed by activity without ensuring alignment with long-term goals. The consequence is not inefficiency but misdirected efficiency: work continues at pace, but the connection to mission and impact gradually weakens.
Psychological research suggests that the bias towards reactivity is reinforced by cognitive processes. The amygdala, activated by urgency and pressure, supports rapid response and short-term problem solving. Strategic thinking, by contrast, requires activation of the prefrontal cortex: slower, more deliberate, and inherently future-oriented. When leaders operate predominantly in reactive mode, organisations may achieve volume of output but lose coherence of direction.
And everything in our lives now push us in the direction of fast, reactive thinking: social media, the sheer load of work and spans of control, and the constant inflow and uptick of need for services.
The question, then, is how strategic thinking can be embedded within already saturated schedules. Evidence from practice indicates that this does not require additional structures so much as intentional adaptation of existing ones. Brief intervals at the end of leadership meetings, reflective framing within board papers, or systematic use of strategic questions within routine reporting can all serve to integrate long-term reflection into organisational rhythms.
This is also where tools can help. Simple frameworks such as PESTLE, SWOT (although they can often elect groans when mentioned), or scenario planning are not ends in themselves, but they act as prompts that surface new perspectives and slow down reactive habits. As one leader noted, “The tool isn’t the point—it’s the conversation it makes possible.”
It is also important to recognise the symbolic power of ritual. Asking participants to set aside digital devices, or deliberately structuring meetings around open questions such as “are we closer to our strategic objectives than at our last review?” signals a shift in mode from operational detail to strategic reflection. Such cues can help sustain the discipline required for higher-order thinking.
Ultimately, operational demands will always expand to fill available time; strategic questions never impose themselves so forcefully. Unless leaders deliberately prioritise reflective practice, the diary will remain dominated by the immediate. The most valuable contribution a chief executive can make is therefore to protect the hardest slot in their calendar: time dedicated not to delivery, but to direction.
