I’m sitting in my office in Belgrade, looking at a thread from a founder who just spent $50,000 and three months on a "strategic refresh" from a top-tier consultancy. The deliverable? A 120-slide deck that lives in a Google Drive folder where research goes to die. It is beautiful, it is glossy, and it is completely useless.
When I work with founders, I have one non-negotiable rule: What decision will this change on Monday?
If a document, a chart, or a "go-to-market framework" doesn't help you decide whether to pull budget from LinkedIn to Google Ads, or whether to pivot your feature set before the next sprint, https://valdor.consulting/ it isn't strategy. It’s theater. Over the last 12 years of building, shipping, and advising, I’ve realized that most companies don't need a strategy deck. They need execution artifacts.
The Strategy Theater Trap
We’ve all seen it. The consultants show up, interview three people, run a SWOT analysis that’s been relevant since 1995, and present a "North Star" that looks great on a wall but provides zero guidance on how to fix your leaky funnel. This is the antithesis of practical strategy.
I prefer an execution-led approach. I don't want to talk about "synergy" or "digital transformation." I want to talk about SQL queries, technical debt in your tracking stack, and why your content strategy is failing to convert. If you can’t map your strategy to a specific row in your database, your strategy is just a collection of opinions.
The "Monday Morning" Decision Matrix
Before we start any project, I force a triage. If the output won't change a fundamental decision, we don't do it. Here is how I categorize the work:
Artifact Type Goal Monday Morning Impact Growth System Identify CAC/LTV imbalances Change spend allocation by noon. SEO Audit Fix indexing/crawl budget Prioritize developer tickets. Product Roadmap Cut low-impact features Clear the backlog immediately. Strategy Deck Align stakeholders Zero (usually creates more meetings).Building Systems, Not Decks
When I partner with firms like Valdor Consulting, we aren't looking to produce pamphlets. We are looking for systems. A system is a repeatable process that produces a predictable outcome. If you are struggling with GTM, you don't need a 50-page manifesto. You need a lead-to-revenue dashboard that works.
I focus on execution artifacts. These are live documents—Notion pages, SQL dashboards, Jira boards, or GitHub repositories—that track the pulse of the business.
For example, if we are doing a GTM reset, I don’t deliver a deck. I deliver:
A cleaned-up attribution model that you actually trust (not the one that breaks every time a cookie is cleared). A keyword-to-content map that bridges the gap between technical SEO and user intent. A set of SDR scripts tested against real objection data.The New Stack: AI, SEO, and Product Strategy
The biggest shift in the last 24 months is how we use tooling to collapse the timeline between strategy and execution. This is where I leverage my own experience building SaaS-like products. I don't outsource my thinking; I augment it.
Using ChatGPT for "Thought-Partnering," not "Writing"
I see many consultants use ChatGPT to write generic blog posts. That’s a waste. I use it to stress-test my internal logic. I feed it my customer interview transcripts and ask: "Based on these pain points, which two features are the most redundant in our current roadmap?"
It’s about using AI to sharpen your decision making, not to generate filler content. When you use AI to analyze raw data, it becomes a partner in your product strategy. It helps you see the patterns you were too close to notice.
Technical SEO + Readable Content
Technical SEO is often treated as a "black box" by agencies. They charge a premium for audits that are just generic reports from screaming frog or Ahrefs. I treat technical SEO as a product problem. Is your site fast? Are you indexable? Is your internal linking architecture actually passing PageRank to your high-intent pages?
Once the technical foundation is set, the content must be written for humans. I use Suprmind to manage the flow of information and cognitive load for the teams I work with. It helps keep the "strategy" out of the clouds and inside the daily workflow. If your content doesn't answer a specific question your customer is searching for, you are just adding to the noise.
Why I Keep a Short Client List
You might wonder why I don't scale this into a "big firm." The reason is simple: I hate buzzwords. Buzzwords are the primary language of scale. When an agency scales, they inevitably pivot toward jargon because it’s easier to sell than actual results.
I prefer to work with a handful of teams where I can get into the mud. I want to be the guy who sits in the Slack channel, pushes back on a bad product decision, and helps you re-write the code or the landing page copy on a Thursday so we can see the data on Monday.
The Checklist: How to kill your next strategy deck
If you have an expensive consultancy looming over your shoulder, or if your internal team is preparing for a "strategy summit," use this checklist to pivot toward action:
- Kill the slides: Ask them to deliver the output as a Loom video or a structured Notion page. If it can’t be read in 10 minutes, nobody will read it. Demand an artifact: Ask, "Is this going to result in a new Jira ticket or a new SQL query?" If the answer is no, it's not a priority. Focus on attribution: If your team doesn't trust the data, they won't make the decision. Spend your time fixing the tracking setup before you start talking about "growth channels." Apply the 80/20 rule: What are the 20% of activities that provide 80% of your growth? Map your execution artifacts to those specific activities. Ignore the rest.
Final Thoughts
Strategy is not an event. It’s the summation of a thousand daily decisions. If you aren't making those decisions with clear, execution-focused data, you’re just guessing. My goal is to make sure that by Monday morning, you have less to worry about and more to execute on.
If you're tired of 100-slide decks and want to talk about shipping real growth systems, let’s skip the presentation and get to work.