Isn’t It Time to Stop Retreating in Strategic Planning?
- Joe Brancucci, EVP CU Results
- 6 days ago
- 8 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
Reflections from planning season, and why relevance doesn’t get the job done anymore.
Each fall, most credit unions prepare for a familiar ritual: the Strategic Planning Retreat. The very phrase carries the comfort of repetition, something that belongs on the calendar alongside the budget cycle and the holiday schedule. The folders are printed, the PowerPoint deck is waiting on a flash drive, and somewhere an assistant is double-checking that the meeting room overlooks something picturesque, a lake, a mountain range, or a stretch of fairway so green it feels unreal.
The name itself sounds safe, even gentle. “Retreat” promises time to think, to step back, to breathe. Yet in an operating environment that feels anything but gentle, it is fair to ask whether that word still serves the moment. The economy does not pause for reflection, and neither do competitors who now move with the precision of code and the speed of a click. Maybe it is time the word caught up.
At CU Results, a division of CU Strategic Planning, our team members have been in more of these sessions than we can count. Some were ambitious, filled with whiteboards and caffeine. Others took place in conference centers so scenic they almost felt like therapy. A few were as forgettable as the chicken served at lunch. Yet one thing always separates the sessions that matter from the ones that fade, and it has nothing to do with the framework, the facilitator, or the font on the agenda. It is the focus that walks into the room and the resolve that walks out of it.
Too often, that single word, retreat, points everyone in the wrong direction before the first slide even appears.
What “Retreat” Usually Looks Like
You have seen it before. The morning opens with polite optimism and the smell of hotel coffee that has been reheated one too many times. At the front of the room, a thick PowerPoint is already waiting, each slide a timestamp from last year’s ambitions. The first few hours unfold like ritual, metrics reviewed, achievements acknowledged, and goals rolled forward as if momentum alone can justify repetition.
The presenter, almost always the CEO, speaks with earnest pride. The numbers sound respectable, the charts rise at mostly friendly angles, and the nods around the table suggest progress. Still, you can sense the quiet distance between data and direction. A few KPIs look fine on paper but say little about what the organization is truly solving for now.
By midmorning, consensus forms around familiar truths. Last year was complex. Next year will be too. And somewhere around the third pot of coffee, someone will promise that the afternoon will be when things get strategic.
Lunch arrives with quiet small talk about loan growth and weather. Then, like clockwork, the flip charts appear. The markers squeak their way across the paper, and ideas begin to fill the air in careful handwriting. The conversation turns toward the future, questions are posed, and polite alignment begins to take shape. Heads nod. Phrases like member experience and digital journey find their way onto the page. The tone stays constructive, the language hopeful, yet the energy never quite shifts from discussion to decision.
By the time the final summary slide appears, good intentions hang in the room like the scent of the afternoon’s dessert tray. Everyone agrees it was a productive day. The closing applause sounds genuine enough. Still, you can feel it, the difference between movement and momentum, between saying something and deciding something.
The setting, of course, is beautiful. The meeting room looks out across a manicured golf course where sunlight flashes off the sprinkler mist. The meals are thoughtful, the chairs forgiving, and the bar opens at just the right moment. It is easy to mistake all that polish for progress. But every now and then, sitting in those perfect rooms, I find myself wondering whether the view has replaced the clarity rather than rewarded it.
From Relevance to Compelling
There was a time when being relevant was enough. It meant staying current, keeping up with technology, and making sure your rates and products did not draw the wrong kind of attention. Relevance carried a quiet respectability, a sense that you were keeping pace with the pack, neither falling behind nor standing out too boldly. For years, that was a kind of success in itself.
But in a market now crowded with institutions that all say the same things about service, rates, and putting members first, relevance has lost its ability to stand apart. Every credit union claims to care. Every bank insists its culture is unique. The sameness is numbing, a landscape of competent voices speaking at the same polite volume. Relevance, once a badge of credibility, has become the minimum ticket to play. It keeps you from being dismissed, but it does not make anyone lean forward.
Compelling is something else entirely. It is what happens when a member feels a pulse in the story you tell, when your tone, your products, and the way you deliver them all align with intention. Compelling is what people experience when they sense that your organization knows exactly who it serves and why. It draws them closer. It earns trust without asking for it. It turns a transaction into a relationship that can survive a competitor’s slightly better rate or a shinier app.
That kind of connection is not built on incremental improvements or another annual goal-setting exercise that produces a list of priorities. It grows out of definition, the decision to take a position and to state clearly who you are and who you are not. It is the willingness to move from saying, “we are here too,” to knowing, “we are here for a reason. This is why the name sets the tone.
Words matter more than most leaders admit. The title of a planning session frames the work before a single slide appears. It sets expectations and quietly tells everyone whether they are gathering to align or to act.
When you call it a retreat, people arrive prepared to relax, to reflect, and to step back from the pace of daily work. The word itself signals recovery, not movement.
A summit lifts the conversation. It becomes about climbing, about seeing farther, about the view from above. The tone rises, and so does the responsibility.
An advance tells the room to lean forward. The discussion shifts from what went wrong to what comes next.
A conclave signals something deeper. The setting feels smaller, more private, more intentional. Decisions begin to matter in a way they did not when the room was filled with flip charts and adjectives.
One word at the top of the agenda can alter posture, tone, and purpose. It can turn a meeting into a mission or a mission into another meeting.
Why We Used “Conclave” and Why It Worked
At one of the most respected, deeply member-focused credit unions in the country, where I served on the executive team for more than a decade, we did not hold a retreat. We held a Strategic Conclave. The difference was not marketing. It was culture.
The Conclave was built around decisions. The agenda was short enough to remember without notes, and the conversations were shaped by the belief that focus matters more than ceremony. Each participant owned a part of the outcome. The room carried a quiet sense of purpose. People came ready to think, ready to name trade-offs, ready to leave with direction rather than discussion.
It was never a time to admire problems or restate priorities. It was the space where we said, with intention, this is what we are choosing and this is what we are not. That discipline, repeated year after year, changed how we planned and how we led.
The word itself carried weight. Over time, the process became more than a date on the calendar. It became a habit of focus. When people walked into that room, they understood that decisions would be made and that those decisions would shape the work for the year ahead.
That credit union continues to stand among the most strategically disciplined and member-anchored institutions in the country. Not because of the name on the invitation, but because the work that name represented was taken seriously. The focus it required became part of the culture, something that lived in every planning conversation long after the Conclave ended.
What Planning Should Actually Deliver
Too often, strategic planning creates agreement without conviction. The slides look professional. The words sound serious. The summary page lands in a folder titled Next Steps. Everyone nods, promises to follow up, and then drifts back to the rhythm of daily work. What began as a conversation about direction fades into a record of intentions. Alignment is achieved, but belief never quite arrives.
When planning truly works, the room feels different. You can sense it. The air tightens a little as trade-offs are named out loud. People stop performing and start thinking. Priorities that once competed begin to form a pattern that makes sense. Laptops close. Pens come out. You can almost hear the faint scrape of chairs as people lean in again. There is a point where the conversation stops being about plans and starts being about choices.
That moment is when energy replaces ceremony. The tone shifts from polite agreement to shared ownership. People leave not only knowing what to do but wanting to do it. The PowerPoint becomes a tool rather than a trophy, something that gets opened again and again because it still points the way forward.
A good plan gives people more than instructions. It gives them something to carry back into the noise of daily work, language that reminds them of what matters and why it matters. When that happens, planning becomes something more than process. It becomes momentum that lasts beyond the room.
Try This Instead
This is not a rebrand; it is a recalibration. The goal is not to decorate the agenda but to name the work honestly. The words at the top of the page shape everything that follows, so they should mean something.
Instead of 202X Strategic Planning Retreat, try one of these:
202X Strategic Advance
202X Credit Union Strategic Conclave
202X Member Value Strategy Summit
Each of these titles carries a signal. Advance implies movement. Conclave suggests gravity and decision. Summit evokes elevation and shared purpose. They tell the room what kind of work will happen and what kind of energy to bring.
When you change the word, you change the posture. People arrive expecting progress instead of reflection. They prepare to contribute, not just to attend. They notice the difference before the first slide appears. That simple shift in language begins to realign the work itself.
Final Word on Strategic Planning
After years of sitting in these rooms — some bold, some beautifully catered, and some simply well-intentioned — I have learned that what separates meaningful strategy from performative planning is not the format. It is the framing: how the work begins, how decisions are treated, and how seriously leaders take the moment in front of them.
When you call it a retreat, people arrive ready to reflect.
They arrive ready to move forward when it is called an advance. .
A conclave carries its own weight. It tells the room that decisions will be made and that they will matter.
Whatever word you choose, let it be honest. Members trust you with their financial lives, and employees trust you to lead with purpose. That trust deserves more than ceremony. It deserves focus that points somewhere and strategy that can withstand the noise of daily work.
At CU Results, we moderate strategic planning sessions across the country. Our role is simple: to help credit unions frame the conversation so it leads to somewhere real. We create the space for candor, for decisions that hold, and for leaders to hear one another again. It is work that depends on listening as much as on leading, and it never looks quite the same twice.
If your next session feels too familiar, maybe this is the year to call it something different, to call it forward. And if we can help you make that happen, we would be glad to. Because the movement has already begun, and your members are already on their way.
