Welcome to the Top 5 Percenter™ Blog

The Strategic Planning Lie That’s Keeping You Average

by | Accountability, High Performance, Profitability and Growth, Strategic Planning

Burn the To-Do List. Your Strategic Plan Is a Lie. 

Let’s stop pretending. 

Most bank “strategic plans” are elaborate theater—packed with buzzwords, layered in charts, but built on a foundation of… nothing. 

This week, Roxanne Emmerich calls out the sham… Strategic planning as you know it, is broken.

You’ll discover:

  • Why plans without accountability are just executive wallpaper.
  • What high-performing banks use instead to crush margin targets.

  • The exact system elite banks install to hardwire culture to profit.

This isn’t theory. It’s execution that lands. 

The 5% who win don’t follow the rules—they rewrite them. If you’re ready to scrap the fluff and lead with fire, the path starts here. 

Book a strategy call and step into the real game. 

 

I’m Roxanne Emmerich. I work with elite banks—the 5% who refuse mediocrity—to grow low-cost deposits, explode margin, and build cultures that crush complacency.

Today, we expose a lie so embedded in banking, it passes as truth:
Strategic planning works.

Wrong.

What most banks call “strategic planning” is a bloated to-do list—paper-shuffled theater with zero accountability, zero alignment, and zero impact. It feels productive. It looks impressive. It does nothing.

I asked my grad school professor—face to face—“Have you ever seen traditional strategic planning work?” He paused. Then admitted:
“Nope. Not really.”

Exactly.

That’s why we built a different system. One designed specifically for banks ready to obliterate average.

This system aligns teams. It electrifies culture. And every move maps directly to profit.

The top 5% of banks use it. Religiously.

If you’re done play-acting with plans that gather dust, let’s fix it.
Book a strategy call now—and I’ll walk you through the exact framework high performers use to engineer results on demand.

More From The Blog

How Elite CEOs Run Game-Changing Board Meetings

Most board meetings are packed with data—but starved of strategic clarity. Discover how the top 5% of banks engineer boardrooms that drive performance, challenge respectfully, and align with breakthrough plans. This week’s episode reveals what high-performing CEOs do differently—and how you can bring that same power to your board.

Halfway Is No Excuse

Midyear banking strategy not working? Elite banks accelerate, not apologize. Here’s how to finish strong—with accountability, margin, and momentum.

Top Bank Doubled Revenue with 1/3 Fewer Staff—Here’s How

Toxic conflict is quietly draining your profits.
Most banks reach for generic culture fixes and miss the root cause—low emotional intelligence and zero accountability. Discover how the best banks use healthy dissension to crush drama, boost performance, and lead the industry in profitability.