Here’s a mildly uncomfortable truth:

If planning sessions built capability, your organisation would already be exceptional.

Instead, we’ve got great slides, neat frameworks… and the same thinking. Because capability doesn’t grow in workshops. It grows in decisions.

The Comfortable Illusion

Planning sessions feel productive, as we convince ourselves we created good questions, really got some visible alignment, and most importantly we had something to show at the end that we could then justify the offsite, catered lunch and team building game of pokemon hunting. 

But nothing really changes. Why?

Because you can’t talk your way into better judgement.

Capability lives in how people think under pressure—not what they wrote on a Post-it at 10:30am between coffee breaks.

The 9-Box Fantasy

Don’t get me started here…………..we love a 9-box. It’s tidy. It’s simple. It makes humans feel manageable, where in reality humans are inconsistent, contextual, and unpredictable. Someone’s “low potential” in one environment is often “outstanding” in another.

It’s what I call Corporate Crystal Balling

Unfortunately that doesn’t fit the model and like we do with the bell curve we’ve gotta make sure that very unique humans are somehow force-fitted into terms like ‘high potential’, ‘solid performer’, or ‘needs development’. It’s as if people are pantry items.

I recall sitting in these sessions facilitated by humans who truly thought this process added value to identifying and improving capability. I guess if you say it and facilitate it enough times it must be true!!

The reality is a 9-box doesn’t build capability—it labels it prematurely and then quietly locks it in.

Where Does Capability Actually Come From? 

Not workshops. Not frameworks.

From people being, involved in decisions they’re not fully ready for, forced to think, not just execute, stretched into ambiguity, and given feedback that challenges how they see things

In short: real work, with real stakes, and real thinking required.

Managers: This Is On You

You are the system for capability building. Not the session.

And it shows up in three ways:

1. Who gets to think

If you make all the calls even when it’s well below your pay grade, you get all the growth and everyone else plateaus. Maybe that’s part of your cunning plan?

2. How quickly you rescue

Step in too early, and you teach people not to think. Struggle is not a dirty word bur rather it’s the mechanism for capability growth. Plain and simple it pays to let go even though your ego is craving a good stroking here

3. Your definition of “ready”

People don’t become ready before the experience. They become ready through it. Ask yourself this little pearler of a question: How does one get experience without being able to experience the experience?

Waiting for readiness is how capability stalls politely.

Try This Instead

Skip one of your offsites  or planning session and involve more people in real decisions, ask harder, more uncomfortable questions, let things stay unclear a little longer, and give feedback that disrupts, not cushions

And maybe—just maybe—stop putting humans into boxes like you’ve solved them.

I’ll Finish With This

Next time you finish a planning day, ask: “Whose thinking actually changed?”

If the answer is “no one, but we’ve got a great deck”…you didn’t build capability. You built evidence that you talked about it.