I caught up with a friend who had resigned at the end of last year. She felt she just couldn’t show up the way she wanted to anymore. In her circumstances, they were driving somewhere, but everyone was running out of gas. After we delved deeper into why she left and the challenges she faced, it got me thinking much further about how leading well through strategic intent ALWAYS needs an emotional lens. Here’s some Ferocious Warmth thinking on balancing the head and heart in your strategic planning.

Most strategic plans look good on paper. Clear pillars. Sensible priorities. Strong intent.

And yet, somewhere around year two or three, something familiar starts to happen. Progress slows. Energy dips. Leaders work harder. People keep going, but it costs more than expected. Burnout research shows that values misalignment and moral distress are stronger predictors of burnout than workload alone (Maslach & Leiter, 1997; Shanafelt et al., 2009, 2015; Epstein & Hamric, 2009; Madigan, D. J., & Kim, L. E. 2021).

Emotionally, mentally, and results-wise, unless we reassess, readjust and chart a course responding to this, things head south.

So instead of simply focussing on this question: What’s the focus of our strategy this year? a Ferocious Warmth (head and heart) oriented question also asks : What is this strategy asking of people – energetically and meaningfully?

Most planning processes privilege activity, timelines, and outputs. Far fewer stop to ask how the work actually feels to live inside.

Yet that’s often where success or failure is decided.

When I’m working with leadership teams, I’ve noticed that almost every initiative can be examined through these two lenses:

• Energy – does this work create momentum, or does it consume it?
• Meaning – does this work replenish people’s sense of purpose, or drain it?

This is the emotional intelligence skills of great leadership. This is where the integration of head and heart, strategic and emotional intelligence work creates better outcomes.

The energy-meaning test

When we talk about strategy, we often collapse everything into on target or off target. But energy and meaning deserve to be explored.

Energy is about momentum. It’s the lived experience of pace, traction, and movement. Whether the work feels like it’s flowing or constantly pushing uphill. Energy can be created by urgency, novelty, or pressure, but it is also easily consumed.

Meaning, on the other hand, is about purpose. It’s the sense that the work matters, aligns with values, and is worth giving ourselves to. Meaning replenishes people over time. It’s what sustains commitment when energy dips, and what makes effort feel justified rather than draining.

Holding these two together is a Ferocious Warmth discipline. Energy without meaning leads to burnout. Meaning without energy leads to frustration. When we attend to both, a much clearer picture emerges.

Holding these two together is a Ferocious Warmth discipline. Energy without meaning leads to burnout. Meaning without energy leads to frustration. When we attend to both, a much clearer picture emerges.

When you hold both energy and meaning together, four distinct patterns tend to emerge.

Low meaning + low energy This is the danger zone. The work drains people and doesn’t feel worthwhile. Cynicism grows. Momentum evaporates. Continuing here carries real risk — to culture, credibility, and outcomes. This is FAILURE ZONE even if nothing has officially failed yet.

High meaning + low energy Here, people care deeply, but progress feels slow, heavy, or blocked. Leaders often feel frustrated because the work matters, yet it’s harder than it should be. Commitment keeps people showing up, but at a cost. This is FRUSTRATION, not failure.

High energy + low meaning This is a risky place. Things move quickly. Activity is high. But the work doesn’t connect to values or purpose. People feel busy, scattered, and depleted. This is where teams become FRAZZLED — can be productive on the surface, exhausted underneath. (btw – frazzled is an authentic neuroscience definition of a ‘mental state where emotional stress and an overabundance of priorities hamper the brain’s executive functions and the ability to focus.’)

High meaning + high energy This is the sweet spot. The work feels worthwhile and it moves. People are stretched, but sustained. There’s momentum without burnout. This is where teams are FLOURISHING

Why this matters for leaders:

What’s striking is that none of these states are about individual capability or commitment. They are system conditions, created by how work is designed, sequenced, resourced, and led.

And yet leaders can respond in predictable (and generally unhelpful) ways:

• We try to motivate when meaning, of lack of, is the issue.
• We push harder when energy is depleted.
• We add urgency to already frustrated work.
• We reward pace without checking purpose.

Over time, this creates change fatigue – not because people resist change, but because too much work sits in the wrong quadrant for too long. We are probably going to hit each quadrant along the way, the difference is knowing where you are at and what needs to change.

Strategy that lasts

Sustainable strategy isn’t about maximising activity. That’s often busy work that is not intentional. It’s about protecting meaning, managing energy, and being honest about cost.

If we want our strategic intent to land, especially in complex, human-centred systems, we need to pay attention not just to what we’re asking people to do, but to what that work is doing to them.

Because in the long run, energy moves the work forward, but meaning is what makes the work worth doing.

Ferocious Warmth as a strategic discipline

This is where Ferocious Warmth becomes more than a leadership idea – it becomes a strategic discipline.

Ferocious Warmth asks us to hold two things at once:

• Warmth – care for people, attention to meaning, acknowledgement of what the work is asking.
• Ferocity – clarity of intent, courage to choose, and discipline about what we will not keep asking people to carry.

In strategic terms, that means resisting two common traps.

The first is warmth without ferocity – where meaning sustains people, but leaders avoid hard decisions. Work stalls. Frustration grows. People keep going out of commitment, even as energy drains.

The second is ferocity without warmth – where urgency and pace dominate, but meaning thins. Things move, but people become frazzled. The heart of the work is missing. They feel disconnected with why they are doing the work.

Ferocious Warmth lives in the tension between the two. It designs work that matters and moves.

When leaders use an energy-meaning lens, they stop asking, “How do we get more out of people?” and start asking, “How do we design work that people can give themselves to with energy – and sustain?”

Strategy that ignores energy burns people. And strategy that ignores meaning burns trust and commitment.

This is where leadership shifts from driving performance to designing conditions.

A reflective activity:

With your team, share the story of each of your strategic goals over 2025.

• Where were the energy highlights?
• The times of deep meaning and pride that sustained the change?
• Where did they intersect?
• What was happening at these times? What patterns become apparent?
• Were there enough of both of them?
• How does that inform our plans for 2026?
• Where does this work sit on the energy–meaning map right now?
• What would it take to move it – not necessarily faster, but more sustainably to the flourishing zone?
• What work needs redesigning, pausing, or even stopping?

This reflection work is time well spent to see where you can create the conditions for not only your strategic intent to thrive, but the people thriving it as well.

(As for my friend, she’s excited about finding a role that hits both the energy and the meaning mark. She wants to show up as a fully contributing and flourishing member of any team. She’ll be a great asset.)

As always, I wish you the ferocity to lead transformation, and the warmth to inspire and connect people.