Be the Most Valuable Player at Your Next Planning Meeting
A tool to surface hidden risks, fix misalignment early, and lead with clarity.
The Cost of Missing Conversations
I vividly remember that sinking feeling. Our team had spent months preparing a strategic product update, integrating conversational AI to dramatically improve the customer experience. We knew exactly what we needed to achieve and signs from systems architecture were consistently positive. Everything seemed on track, until by pure accident I discovered that the underlying architecture was missing critical enablers essential for success.
The oversight wasn’t complicated. It was just costly. It delayed our timeline by weeks, created unnecessary stress, and damaged trust that had taken a long time to build.
Another memory is just as clear: a strategic product launch meant to open new markets and drive growth. We, the product team, believed sales was fully aligned, but key commitments had never been explicitly confirmed. In reality, only a portion of the sales team was equipped and prepared to lead with the new product. As a result, despite strong early traction and high pitch-to-conversion rates, the launch missed its chance to make the big splash we had hoped for.
One was a large multinational. The other, a small international business. Different contexts, same issue: preventable misalignment surfacing too late.
It did not happen because of a lack skill or expertise. It was simply costly lack of shared foresight.
Why I Created The Systems Edge
Experiences like these led me to build The Systems Edge. It’s a strategic lens designed to help organizations operate with more clarity and adaptability - both essential for continuous change, which has become the norm.
The first tool under this lens is the Foresight Radar. It helps different departments, functions or teams make the invisible visible—surfacing cross-unit and cross-functional dependencies, assumptions, and risks early on, when action is still simple. While the intention to do so is common, the context makes it hard to apply.
There are already some mature agile teams and product companies who already excel at using foresight on dependencies, and within product management, there are rituals like PI planning for example where it is effectively exercised. However, in most cases foresight proves a challenge between different company units, both laterally and vertically. Consequently, effective alignment across functions, initiatives, and layers of work still breaks down. Even where planning processes exist and modern goal setting frameworks are applied. Strategy often gets mistranslated or shared in ways that create stress and lack of confidence across teams.
A study published in Harvard Business Review found that only around 30% of employees fully understand their company’s strategy. That gap is where misalignment breeds.
Introducing the Foresight Radar
If we’d had the Foresight Radar in the situations I described at the beginning of this article, we would have spotted the gaps, confirmed assumptions, and protected momentum and trust on time, which would have saved headaches and company funds.
First off, the Foresight Radar doesn’t replace your planning process, it is created to strengthen it. It clarifies what's already in motion, helps you see what's missing, and creates space for those conversations to happen now, not later.
It is helpful whether you’re using it alone to reflect on your team’s goals, and even more powerful when used with other units to align before operational plans are locked in. It’s not about control. It’s about clarity.
Two Versions, One Purpose
Zoom-In Foresight Radar: Helps surface assumptions and dependencies within a specific team, department, or initiative.
Zoom-Out Foresight Radar: (coming soon) Highlights systemic risks across larger areas of the organization or multiple coordinated teams.
This article focuses on the Zoom-In Radar. It’s the fastest way to start building foresight into your existing work.
How the Zoom-In Foresight Radar Works
The Radar helps you map initiatives & goals over time, then identify and clarify the connections that could impact their success.
You don’t need a perfect view of every team to use it. You can start with what you know. It works well as a solo prep tool before a planning session. It has been designed to be used live in a room (or a board) with your key partners.
Here’s how to get started:
Get your Free Zoom-In Radar Starter Kit (with detailed information and free templates) via the link below
Pick the format that works for you
Map your team’s initiatives across short-, mid-, and long-term timelines
List the other units doing connected work
Use the Radar to uncover and map critical dependencies using color-coded arrows
The steps are simple. The impact comes from what you see—and what you realize still needs a conversation.
Get your free Starter Kit. Link Below!
Where and When to Use It
Use the Radar when you're preparing for:
Quarterly or monthly planning
Strategic launches
Cross-functional syncs
Pre-mortems and retrospectives
Any situation where multiple outcomes rely on coordination
It’s built for any team that wants to think more clearly and lead with fewer blind spots. And it's flexible enough to grow with you. It is designed for repeated use, and a tool that brings you and your coworkers the needed context for continuous cross-unit and cross-functional alignment.
Questions That Reveal What’s Missing
Here are some examples of questions that can help surface clarity. The Foresight Radar is designed to help you take advantage of the answers. These are the kinds of questions that reveal quiet risks. The ones that build up over time and show up late.
What and who else does this goal rely on to succeed?
Who depends on us delivering this—and for what?
Where is this at risk of being delayed or blocked?
What are we assuming is on track but haven’t verified?
Start Using the Radar Now
The Radar is free because I believe that clarity should be standard, not a luxury. You’ll walk away with clearer plans, stronger cross-functional insight, and fewer "we missed that" moments.
Download the Zoom-In Radar Starter Kit
Let It Evolve With You
When you use the Radar and uncover something that makes a difference, I’d love to hear about it. If you’ve tried it and felt stuck, I want to know that too.
I am building The Systems Edge through practical tools like the Foresight Radar continuously, and the best way to do it is with input from your experience. Your stories and feedback shape how it evolves.
Reach out directly through my homepage on martinilievski.com or tag your work with #ForesightRadar and #TheSystemsEdge.
If you would like some help applying it in your context, I offer support to teams and leaders putting clarity into practice.
The Vision Ahead
Imagine starting every meeting from a place of clarity. Even better, now you can be the person who brings that context for foresight and clarity with this tool. Less time spent decoding and re-explaining. More time solving the right problems. Fewer surprises. Better decisions and ultimately more trust between teams and functions.
That’s what the Foresight Radar helps create.
And this is just the beginning of what I’m building through The Systems Edge.
