The Impact of Metaphor on Owning Your Strategic Plan

What if instead of viewing your strategic plan as a document, you viewed it as a living, breathing guide for making decisions?

Too often, strategic plans collect dust. Binders that sit untouched. PDFs rarely reopened. Why? Because they’re built with jargon, not meaning. With checkboxes, not clarity.

Mary Kay Delvo doesn’t just build plans. She roots them. Her Strategy Tree© is more than a metaphor. It anchors strategy in something deeper: vision, mission, values, direction, and action. It is not fluff. It is the difference between a team that’s aligned with purpose and one that just goes through the motions and returns to status quo. 

Here’s the picture

• The sun is your vision-what you’re reaching for.

• The trunk is your mission-what you do, your purpose

• The roots are your values-what grounds and guides you

• The branches are your strategic direction-your core areas of focus

• The leaves are your tactics-the flexible, seasonal actions that adapt to changing needs

If your team can’t see this picture, they will feel disconnected and they won’t own the plan. 

Mary Kay says it best: “If your trunk becomes detached or damaged, you’re going sideways, creating a weak foundation that weakens your roots, and if your roots are not grounded, your tree won’t grow well or stand long.” 

This is not a cute analogy.

It is a call to action to stop separating planning from purpose.

Time to own the work because this IS the work.

Watch the full video with Mary Kay Delvo to see how coaching, consulting, board development, and facilitation combine to move organizations from stuck to strategic. Her work challenges assumptions, ignites insight and builds lasting momentum.

Follow us on YouTube.

To contact INspiring SIGHT, reach out to:

• Mary Kay Delvo, Owner and Founder

• marykay@inspiringsight.com

• 612-750-0814