In this episode of the Proteus Leader Show, host Erika Andersen interviews longtime colleague Bonita Fitzgerald Mosley about the critical role of clear vision and strategic planning for organizations, especially amid disruptive events like the COVID‑19 pandemic. Bonita explains why leaders must articulate a future direction to navigate obstacles, and she outlines the warning signs that an organization needs a strategic refresh—such as stagnation, competitive pressure, technological shifts, or economic upheaval. The conversation highlights the power of shared vision and buy‑in across boards, leadership teams, and stakeholders, emphasizing that alignment fuels momentum and execution. Bonita shares practical tactics for turning vision into action, including regular check‑ins, performance scorecards, and ensuring plans are not merely filed away. A detailed case study of USA Track & Field’s “Project 30” illustrates how setting an ambitious medal target, securing Olympic Committee funding, and maintaining disciplined execution led to a record‑breaking 29 medals. The episode concludes with resources for listeners to engage Proteus’s vision‑strategy process and Erika’s book Being Strategic.
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You're listening to the Proteus Leader Show with Erika Andersen, where you'll get practical tools and insights for leading, managing, and staying ready for the future. Erika is the founding partner of Proteus, a firm that focuses uniquely on leader readiness. A nationally known executive coach and bestselling author, you may already know her as one of the most popular leadership bloggers on Forbes.com. Ready for something you can use today? Here's Erika.
Hello everyone, and welcome back to the Proteus Leaders Show. My guest today is Bonita Fitzgerald Mosley, a longtime friend and client who has recently become my colleague at Proteus. Over the past 20 years, Bonita and I have worked together when she, as a senior executive at Women in Cable Telecommunications, USA Track and Field, U.S. Olympic Committee, and Laureus USA, was tasked with clarifying and achieving a successful future for her organizations. Now she's working with us to help clients do that for themselves, create clear vision and strategic plans, and make the changes needed to get there. So welcome to the show, Benita.
Nice to be here, Erika.
I'm so excited, and I thought that your experience from both perspectives, both as an organizational leader and now as a facilitator of our vision and strategy work, would be a great mix and really helpful for our listeners, especially now during these unprecedented times. So I can't wait to talk to you about this. The, the first thing I wanted to focus on is you— we've had a lot of conversations recently where you've said to me that you think it's more important now than ever before for leaders to create clear vision and strategy for their organizations. So can you tell me more about why you think that?
Certainly, you know, after working alongside you for— I can't believe it, it's almost 20 years. Anytime I say that, I think of my parents when they would say that to me growing up. I think, 20 years? My goodness, I could do anything for 20 years. I'm only 5, you know. But it's been a long time, but it's been some great experience. I've learned is that kind of no matter what's going on externally, if you have a clear vision of where you want to take the organization, then you can build the strategies to try and get around whatever obstacles you need to get around that are current state kind of things in order to get you to where you're trying to go. And sometimes, you know, in the midst of something like a global pandemic, you know, there may be opportunity also to adjust that vision ever so slightly and those strategies ever so slightly to ensure, you know, that you can get past that one huge obstacle and still accomplish the goals that you have set for the organization.
Yeah. I think it's— Yeah, I love looking at it that way, that it's not— and I'd love to hear your point of view about this— that I think sometimes now people think, how can we possibly clarify the future? But you can. There are things that aren't changing and things you still need to focus on, right?
Or people can become just, quite frankly, paralyzed in the midst of all of the craziness that's going on. And there are a couple of organizations that either I'm, you know, on the board of or involved with in some way. And all of a sudden now, our— one of our presidential candidates, Joe Biden, has adopted this phrase about build back better. But it's true. It's, it's, it's how do I take the opportunity that may— you may be afforded where you get to pause just a little bit, slow down just a little bit, but take advantage of that time to really envision the future. And how can I make my company, my organization, how can I serve my customers better? What new products and services, what new ways of doing business can I think of? That I'm, you know, building my organization, my company back better than and stronger than it was before.
That's great. Taking advantage of this time when in a way kind of all bets are off, every— everything is different, to, to look and really reflect and see how could we be better in the future, in this new future that's going to happen. Yeah, that's great. I love that frame. So how does— so one of the things I— and I'm asking you this both as a leader and now as you think about helping other leaders, just some practical guidance. So some of our listeners might be thinking, gee, I wonder if I need to do this. So what are the things that a leader might notice in their organization that are good indicators that, oh yeah, it might be good to do some of this kind of long-term vision and strategy work?
Yeah, so I think first, sometimes if you've been at an organization long enough, or if an organization has been around long enough, you, you may feel you've come to, you know, there's some level of stagnation that I think that occurs.
Yeah.
Kind of a resting on your laurels or just maintaining the status quo. People call it, you know, kind of phoning it in, like, and now we literally are because many of us are working remotely.
But—
Or Zooming it in, however that might be. But I think that often happens. I also think some business imperatives may come along, you know, new competitors in the market, you know, new technology that you need to adopt or adapt to. economic downturn or even upturn or, you know, a global pandemic. It kind of doesn't matter. But I think those kinds of things occurring in your organization should get you to thinking, okay, you know, what's next for us? How do I overcome these hurdles, to use a pun since I'm a hurdler? And then, you know, how can we You know, I was saying that earlier, you know, how can we make this work, you know, in our favor?
Yes. Yeah, I love that. So if a leader feels like we're not— we're resting on our laurels, we haven't thought about this in a long time, or we're just kind of going along the path of least resistance, that's a good sign. And if that's happening, especially when there are big changes in the environment that affect the organization, that's always a good time then to relook.
And that's— yeah, I feel like that's almost always right. I mean, if you really are aware and keeping track of your industry and kind of what's going on with customers, either, you know, it ebbs and flows, the businesses, and during that ebbing and flowing, there are always indicators that some change may be required. in order to even maintain the status quo. You know, sometimes that means if I'm not keeping up, then I'm falling behind. And just to keep up, I feel sometimes you have to refresh that vision and strategy. But definitely if you're trying to, you know, go full speed ahead.
Yeah, yeah, that makes all the sense in the world. And then I'd love for our listeners who are in the main, I think, individual leaders, I'd love to hear your experience of how it has been because I've watched you over these almost 20 years in 4 different organizations work with your team to create a clear vision strategy and then to implement it. So what's your experience of how it's helpful to you as a leader, to an individual leader, to have that clarity of vision and strategy?
So I think first and foremost, it was important for me, particularly as a CEO reporting to a board of directors, and in at least 2 of those cases, where I've worked with you, it was important for me to get a shared vision of where we're trying to take the organization so that I, I was clear and they were clear and we were all on the same page about where we're trying to get to because it's going to require specific, you know, obviously plans and resources and financial and human, certain innovation that may be required and new directions. I'm, I'm a I'm an athlete first and foremost, and so I'm always trying to go for the gold and take organizations to areas and places they've never gone before. But I can't do that by myself. I have to not only have, you know, the board and the leadership of the organization with me, but, you know, my peers and, and my staff, my team, and many times strategic partners. So having that shared vision and buy-in and At the get-go and throughout the process was really important because then you feel like you've got the momentum with you.
Yep.
And then having a clear plan. But I'd say the key to that plan, because oftentimes, and we've talked about this as I've transitioned to, you know, facilitating, is one of the biggest challenges you found working with clients is that they— that plan might sit on the shelf. They don't actually You know, do a great job executing the plan. And so, yeah, me, the successes came because we were able to execute the plan effectively and putting all kinds of mechanisms in place to be able to do that. The check-ins and the, you know, putting together performance screen that everybody understands where they have skin in the game and helping bring that plan and those goals and that vision to fruition. And then ultimately, once you've done that and you've had these world-class results, then it inspires people to want to do it again. You know, you don't have to pull anybody's leg or arm in order to get them to get back at the table and, okay, let's recreate a new vision and let's, you know, update our strategy and let's, you know, keep charting that course forward because people are excited. So I think also Being clear, sometimes you have a goal with no specific plan. Boy, we want to be number one in the industry, or we want to, you know, implement this new thing, but there's no plan to get there. There's no how am I getting there. What are the goals? What are the milestones? Like, who's helping me? What resources do I need? How am I going to budget accordingly? And so what I got to USA Track and Field, the CEO was like, okay, Project 30, you know, we want to win 30 medals in London 3 years from now. And I'm thinking to myself, y'all won 22 or 23 medals in Beijing in 2008. How are we going to, you know, increase, you know, 30% of medal production? That's huge. That's like 30% increase in revenue or 30%, you know, whatever.
Yeah.
more market share or something. Like, it's, it's a huge deal. It doesn't seem like 7, 8 medals doesn't seem like a big deal, but it's huge. And, uh, and, and what we had to do to get there. So having that bought-in kind of shared vision, a bought-in plan, not only with the, the all the different constituents, but even those who might be funding that effort.
Yes.
Uh, for us, that was the U.S. Olympic Committee. funding the effort and bought in from the get-go at the table as we're coming up with the plan. And then when we're trying to execute that plan, they're all in. Everybody's rowing in the same direction or running in the same direction. And we got to 29 medals, 9 4th places, as you might recall.
Yeah.
So 9 times we could have gotten that 30th medal just with another inch or Hundredth of a second or a better lean or something, but, you know, still far better than we had done in 20 years. And so those are the kinds of results that we were able to get because we were not only had some lofty goals, but we had a clear, clear strategy for getting there.
Yeah. Oh, what a wonderful summary. And I love the idea of shared and clarity, then— and clarity all the way through, not just from the goal but from the plan— then you have that momentum where you can actually work together. And I have to say, you know, I've seen you work vision and strategy plans really well for the last 2 decades. And, you know, obviously it's what we try and do with all our clients. But I think you really identified the key things that make this work powerful for a leader and really help make leaders successful. So— Oh my gosh, thank you so much. I always feel— I mean, just before we started talking, I said, oh, we get to talk again. I always love talking to you.
Likewise.
And I always feel like, oh, we could talk about this for another 3 or 4 hours. But we always promise our listeners that we'll keep this short and sweet. So listeners, if you're interested in finding out more about the vision and strategy process that Proteus offers, you can do 2 things. You can go to proteusleader.com/topic And click on Being Strategic, or you can check out my book Being Strategic on Amazon or any other place where electronic books are sold. So thank you for listening, and thank you for being here, Bonita.
My pleasure, Erika. Always great to talk to you.
Yeah, and until next time, listeners, here's to creating the life you truly want.
We hope you're feeling better equipped to create the career, the business, and the life you want. For more insights and tools for leadership and management, Join us at proudestleader.com. Have an excellent day, and thanks for listening.
