What it is and what problem it solves
Playbooks don't fail because of the strategy. They fail because they are written as recommendations. “Strengthen our presence in the modern channel” sounds like a plan, but it has no owner, no budget, and nobody can say on what date it is finished.
The sheet forces every action through six fields before it enters the playbook. The result is the whole playbook as executable sheets: a document leadership can approve at its real cost and a third party can execute without interpreting.
It also sorts out the roles. The client decides which sheets get approved. We write them with the client's team and direct their execution. Third parties execute, whether that is the agency, the sales team or the distributor.
When to use it and when not to
It is used in the Playbook phase, once the one-page thesis and the activation sequence exist. Each sheet hangs from one wave of that sequence. It also works for auditing an inherited plan: running each initiative through the six fields is the fastest way to see which ones are real.
A routine task, or one that takes an afternoon, doesn't need a sheet; that lives in the team's task tool. The rule is simple: if it consumes budget or needs more than one person, it gets a sheet.
The sheet also works for tests whose outcome is unknown, with one nuance: the definition of done is having learned something specific, and the sheet carries a stop date.
How it is built
- Tie every action to the thesis. Every action has to support one of the coherent actions in the thesis. Deliverable: list of candidate actions, each with its wave.
- Filter. Whatever supports nothing goes to a “we won't do” list, which also gets signed. Deliverable: clean list and list of exclusions.
- One owner. A named person with a title who is accountable, not a department. Deliverable: owner and executor per sheet.
- Full cost. External spend and internal hours. Deliverable: cost per sheet that rolls up into the period budget.
- KPI with a starting point. One indicator with its source and its value in the signed baseline. Deliverable: indicator, source and target.
- Date and dependency. Start, finish and what has to exist first. Deliverable: calendar with the cross-dependencies between sheets.
- Definition of done. A condition a third party can verify without asking. Deliverable: written criterion.
- Executor sign-off. Whoever executes reads the sheet and accepts it or pushes back before starting. Deliverable: accepted sheet.
Anatomy of the deliverable
This is the template. The right-hand column shows how each field gets written badly, which is how it appears in most plans.
| Field | What goes in | Hypothetical example | Not good enough |
|---|---|---|---|
| Action | Verb, object and scope | Train the salespeople in all five branch offices on the target-tier talk track | Improve sales training |
| Owner | One accountable person | VP of Sales, by name | Sales |
| Executes | Who does the work | Training firm and branch managers | Everyone |
| Cost | External spend plus internal hours | The firm's fees plus one day per salesperson | TBD |
| KPI | Indicator with source | Target-tier proposals as a share of the total, per the CRM | More sales |
| Target | Value against baseline | Agreed value over the baseline figure | Grow |
| Date | Start and finish | Two specific dates | Q1 |
| Dependency | What must exist first | Offer ladder approved and prices loaded in the ERP | None |
| Definition of done | Verifiable condition | Every salesperson has passed the sales role-play and the CRM records the tier on every proposal | Training delivered |
One distinction separates a serious playbook from a decorative one. The definition of done says whether the action was executed. The KPI says whether it worked. An action can be done and not work, and the period committee needs to know which of the two happened.
The classic framework: RACI and OKR
The RACI matrix assigns four roles to each task: who does it (Responsible), who answers for it (Accountable), who is consulted (Consulted) and who is kept informed (Informed). Its best rule is that there is only one A per task. Its limit is that it assigns people and says nothing about whether the task worked. On large projects the matrix also grows until nearly everyone is a C.
OKRs, which Andy Grove applied at Intel and John Doerr later spread, pair a qualitative objective with two to five measurable key results. They measure outcomes, not activity, and that is their strength. But they say nothing about cost or dependencies. And in companies without a strategy function they tend to end up as a wish list, with tasks dressed up as key results.
Our adaptation takes the single A from RACI and the split between who is accountable and who executes. From OKRs it takes the KPI with a measurable target, anchored to a signed baseline. And it adds what both are missing: cost, date, dependency and definition of done. Objectives live in the thesis. The sheet lives in the work.
Common mistakes
- A department as owner. It's done to avoid making anyone uncomfortable. In the committee, the consequence is that nobody answers.
- Cost counted only as external spend. Internal hours are treated as free. The plan fits the budget but not the team's calendar, and that surfaces halfway through the period.
- Activity KPIs. Number of visits or posts, because they are quick to measure. They work as leading indicators, always paired with an outcome indicator.
- Invisible dependencies. The agency's action depends on a price leadership hasn't approved. It happens when each area writes its sheets without cross-checking them.
- “Done” equals “delivered.” The executor writes it, and delivering a document is not the same as changing how a team sells.
An illustrative scenario
Take a hypothetical marketing agency in Santo Domingo that has won a beverage brand's account and has to present the plan for the year. The first draft has many well-thought-out initiatives and not one with an owner on the client side.
Running them through the sheet does three things. Some drop out because nobody at the brand can be accountable for them. Others merge because they chase the same KPI. And a dependency nobody had seen appears: activation in colmados, the neighborhood corner stores, depends on the distributor having product with the wholesalers before the date, and that is handled by the brand's trade marketing team, not the agency.
The agency presents fewer actions, each with an owner, a cost and a date. It is the kind of work we do as a strategy partner for marketing agencies.