Episode 7: Insights from Brian Hurtak: From PlayBook to PlaySheet — How to Cut Through the Noise and Execute Strategy That Sticks
- Ben Chamberlain
- 6 hours ago
- 4 min read
🎙️ New Episode Alert – Practitioners Unfiltered Ep. 7 is live on Strategy eXecution Unlocked! 🎙️
In this series on the Strategy eXecution Unlocked podcast, Ben Chamberlain sits down with the founding members of The Strategy eXecution Forum. These practitioners span diverse roles, functions, and industries, all united by a common mission: helping their organizations effectively bridge the gap between strategy and execution.
Episode 7: Insights from Brian Hurtak: From PlayBook to PlaySheet — How to Cut Through the Noise and Execute Strategy That Sticks
Ben recently sat down with Brian Hurtak, an enterprise portfolio and program management leader with 15+ years of experience at Fortune 100 financial institutions, connecting the dots between strategy formulation, delivery, and value realization. Brian has operated at every level of the strategy-to-execution chain — from product and program management to portfolio management and enterprise strategy — giving him a rare end-to-end view of where organizations succeed and where they silently bleed value.
He specializes in cutting through cognitive overload, designing lean execution offices that earn C-suite confidence, and building the cross-functional alignment that makes strategy actually stick. He is also a Council & Founding Member of the Strategy eXecution Forum.
Watch a short clip below and become a StrategyXF member to access the full episode.
Brian's Central Message
Brian's central message from the episode (From PlayBook to PlaySheet — How to Cut Through the Noise and Execute Strategy That Sticks): Strategy Execution fails not because organizations lack strategy — it fails because the three critical parts of the business lifecycle never truly connect. Strategy formulation, delivery, and value realization operate in separate silos, each with their own measures, systems, and language. The result is an organization that works hard but realizes far less value than it plans for. Closing that gap requires a practitioner who can connect the people, processes, tools, and measures across all three — while earning C-suite trust by speaking the language of value, not activity. The organizations that crack this build lean, focused execution functions, cut through cognitive overload at the top, and increasingly harness agentic AI to run portfolio cycles that were never humanly possible before.
Key Highlights from Our Unfiltered Conversation
🔍 Strategy is a Secret in Most Organizations — The majority of employees have no idea what the actual strategy is. The result: teams build bottom-up plans that feel productive but compound misalignment from day one. Brian explains why visibility into strategic intent is the first and most important move any execution leader can make.
📊 Stop Drowning the C-Suite in Activity — Most practitioners report upward on the "how" — RAG ratings, milestone trackers, and jargon-heavy dashboards that tell leaders nothing about whether strategy is being realized. Brian makes the case for flipping the narrative: connect every body of work to the value it's supposed to deliver, or lose your audience at the top.
💼 Win the CFO, Win the Room — The CFO controls the purse strings and carries more organizational weight than any practitioner. Brian's approach: quantify value leakage and missed ROI in financial terms, create a CFO champion, and watch the doors open that were previously closed.
🏈 The PlayBook vs. The PlaySheet — A PlayBook contains every possible play. A PlaySheet is the 20–30 contextual plays chosen for the opponent you're facing right now. Brian shares how this NFL sideline concept — applied to corporate strategy execution — changes how leaders operate under pressure, prioritize ruthlessly, and adapt in real time.
🧠 Cognitive Load is the Enemy of Execution — Information overload, data smog, and activity-heavy reporting are not just inefficiencies — they actively prevent C-suite leaders from seeing whether strategy is being realized. Brian explores how simplifying what goes upward is one of the highest-leverage moves an execution leader can make.
🏚️ Silos Don't Just Form — They Entrench — Over time, strategy, delivery, and finance each build their own measures, systems, and language. Brian explains how this silent coordination gap erodes value steadily and why no amount of project governance fixes a problem that is fundamentally one of organizational architecture.
🤝 The Connector Model: Building Your Village — Brian's approach to cross-functional alignment doesn't rely on formal authority. Instead, he builds a horizontal "village" of aligned practitioners across functions — people who don't report to him but operate toward a shared objective. It's how strategy execution actually gets done in large, matrixed organizations.
🏗️ Lean and Simple Wins C-Suite Buy-In — Bloated execution offices with large headcounts and heavy process overhead consistently lose C-suite confidence. Brian makes the case for small, focused shops that orchestrate value rather than administer process — and explains why less is almost always more when it comes to building lasting executive trust.
🤖 Agentic AI is the Next Frontier — From intake and prioritization to benefit realization tracking, Brian shares his vision for autonomous AI agents running portfolio management cycles end-to-end. This isn't a distant future — it's a near-term shift that will fundamentally reshape how strategy execution teams operate and what human practitioners focus on.
If you're a CEO, C-suite executive, strategy leader, transformation professional, or anyone passionate about turning ambitious plans into tangible results, this episode delivers candid, practitioner-led insights you can apply immediately — regardless of industry.
Become a member and access and watch the full episode!
The Importance of Community in Strategy Execution
Massive thanks to Brian for his candor, depth of experience, and passion for elevating Strategy Execution to a true C-suite imperative.
The Strategy eXecution Forum (StrategyXF) is an invite-only, no-fee professional community built by and for the practitioners who know firsthand how hard it is to close the persistent gap between strategy and results. We believe it takes a village to master strategy execution. This is why StrategyXF brings together senior leaders from across the enterprise: C-suite executives, Strategy & Operations leaders, Transformation Offices, Finance, HR, IT, PMO, Enterprise Risk, Change Management, Portfolio Management, Business Architecture, and more.
Together, members collaborate on real-world challenges, share battle-tested approaches, and shape the future of how organizations execute with discipline and impact. This isn't a passive network; it's a practitioner-led community where your experience adds real value. Every discussion is designed to deliver practical ideas you can apply right away. If you are serious about elevating strategy execution as a mission-critical discipline, we invite you to apply to become a member and help us build something the profession has long needed.
More unfiltered conversations with Strategy eXecution Forum founders are coming soon! 🚀
