Annual Planning Theater: The Illusion of Rigor
April 2026: Simon Rurka, Founder & CEO
Executive Summary
In a 6,000 person marketing, sales and product organization, we found 160,000 hours spent on annual planning per year. That’s 90 heads. That productive effort could otherwise have been spent solving problems for customers and accelerating roadmaps. In this article, we outline what to avoid, and how disciplined but efficient organizations handle annual planning.
Planning is essential. False precision and over-engineering planning processes are not.
A Massive Effort in Large Organizations
Annual Planning can be a massive effort, involving multiple cycles and re-runs across several months. Plus heavy lobbying behind the scenes. Rarely is the Plan Review the actual discussion.
Work expands to fill the time allocated to it, like gas in a container.
Adding up the numbers
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Across five established tech companies, the average time spent on annual planning in a 1000 person organization was 31,000 hours per year.
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In one 6000 person sales, marketing and product organization, that translated to 80 full heads of work.
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Employees reported repeat analyses, number re-runs and duplicate reviews as de-motivating, as well as unproductive.
Organizational Consequences
Arguably more detrimental than the headcount cost is misplaced productive effort. Focus is pulled away from solving customer problems, accelerating roadmaps and actually growing the business. Instead, it feeds the planning machine.
One conundrum companies face is when to start the planning process.
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Begin in June to get ahead, and conditions have changed by December.
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Start too late, and you’re inside lead time for marketing programs and product development. You lose the leverage of time.
Some companies have broken the process into bi-annual plans. Done right, this can be effective (Amazon is known for its OP1 and OP2 planning structure) . But unchecked, this approach may simply double the overhead.
A Symptom of Classic Stagnation Traps
Many well-run organizations that have declined (or disappeared), have fallen prey to the same stagnation traps as their predecessors.
These include bureaucracy, slow decisions, risk-aversion, inward focus and performance theater.
An over-engineered annual planning process is not the cause, but can be symptomatic of these traps. Especially in the case of performance theater and inward focus.
Principles for Effective Annual Planning
Fast organizations that also retain rigor, adhere to these four principles in designing their annual planning process. Most importantly, they are truthful in monitoring adherence to them, and drift into excess process:
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Acknowledge that forecasts have a large uncertainty range. Don’t waste cycles on the illusion of precision early on. It’s pure theater.
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Give each major action a must decide by (MDB) date. Longer lead time items should receive a risk-commit early on. Before annual KPIs are locked.
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For KPIs that won’t lock until end-of-year, go with an ultra-light touch placeholder until one month out. Then a sprint to lock it in.
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Senior leaders remind themselves of #1 for every analysis and checkpoint they request.
Striking The Balance
Planning is essential. False precision and over-engineering planning processes are not. Fast organizations redirect productive effort to solving problems in the business and for customers.
Reduced planning overhead also energizes people and teams, creating a positive feedback loop that benefits productivity and speed.
About The Simon Impact
Founded by Simon Rurka after running multiple, complex global P&Ls at Intel, The Simon Impact is built on deep operating experience. Drawing upon 24 years of leadership and 7400+ data points, Simon created a new class of diagnostic to address large company inertia. Today, Simon helps clients solve the problems that come with scale. Teams move faster and become dramatically more productive.
