From Trash Talk to Timelines

What a fantasy football league taught me about roles, resilience, and the truth behind strategy.

Once upon a time, I ran an all-women fantasy football league. Most of the women in that first season already knew the game — they could talk plays, players, and penalties with the best of them. But when we posted about our league on social media, other women would chime in with comments like, “I wish I understood football,” or “Nobody ever taught me this stuff.” That’s when it clicked: men rarely take the time to teach women about football, and the assumption is that if you don’t already know, you’re not welcome to learn.

Meanwhile, inside the league? We talked so much trash. It was loud, it was playful, and it was ours. Men were begging to join the following year, but we swore up and down they wouldn’t survive the level of shit talking we threw around every week. More importantly, I wanted the league to stay what it was meant to be: a community of women, centered on a game we knew and loved, built outside of the male gaze.

By the second season, we had women in the league who were learning as they went. Their only requirement? Be open to figuring it out, and be ready to hold your own in the trash talk. And it worked. Not only did it allow us to grow our little community, but it also accomplished a goal I didn’t even know I had: helping people learn something they’d always wanted to know, but either didn’t feel comfortable asking or had asked before and been ignored.

That’s why I started writing the guides — not for the women in the league (they already had it down), but for the women on the outside who wanted in. The ones who deserved to feel like football belonged to them too. At the time, it felt like a fun side project. Looking back, I realize it was my first big experiment in systems-building.

A quick note: when I talk about playbooks, I don’t just mean football. Playbooks are documentation, the implementation plans that carry strategy into reality. Strategy sets the vision, but without a playbook, nobody knows how to actually run the plays.

Playbooks Create Accessibility

The NFL has a rule book that runs hundreds of pages. That’s fine if you’re already obsessed, but it’s useless for someone who just wants to follow a game at a watch party. What people needed wasn’t the full text; they needed an entry point. That’s what I do when I consult: I build systems that give people the knowledge they need at the level they’re at. Strategy only works if the people using it can actually understand and act on it. Accessibility isn’t about dumbing things down, it’s about making sure the system has doors instead of walls.

Documentation + Flexibility = Resilience

Football teams rely on playbooks; projects rely on frameworks. Back then, I was sketching field positions and writing explainers to give women confidence at kickoff. Now, I create workflows, messaging banks, and roadmaps that give organizations confidence in execution.

But documentation isn’t meant to lock you in. One of the things I used to say as a project manager was, I make the rules so that I know how to bend them. That’s the point. We don’t write processes in stone; we build them so we can use discernment. Sometimes you skip a step, change the order, or put something on hold — because conditions shift, the “weather” changes, and you have to adapt.

The value of documentation is that when all hell breaks loose, you’re not lost. You can always return to the playbook, to the strategy, to the plan. It becomes your North Star. Not a prison, but a map. That’s how I use documentation in consulting now: not to box people in, but to make sure the whole team knows where the road is, even when we have to take a detour.

That’s what resilience looks like: not rigidity, but structure strong enough to bend and still hold.

Roles Keep the System Running

On the field, everyone has a lane. A quarterback doesn’t block (don’t start with me on this one), and a running back doesn’t call the plays. That clarity prevents chaos. The same is true in campaigns, consulting, and creative work. Defining who’s quarterbacking, who’s blocking, and who’s running routes is the first step in any project. Without roles, you end up with duplication, burnout, or gaps. With them, you get flow.

One of the more sinister dynamics I see in consulting is when people step into roles without the expertise to execute them. Social media is the clearest example: because someone has an account, they assume they can create digital strategy. But strategy isn’t just posting — it’s sequencing, targeting, messaging, analytics, timing. It’s a system. In the same way that you don’t want a cornerback always lining up as a lineman when the ball is snapped, you don’t want someone who doesn’t understand the bigger picture calling plays.

The outcome is almost always the same: the project loses momentum, timelines collapse, and the team burns energy covering for gaps. And too often, when the system falters, the strategist gets blamed — even when the real problem was someone ignoring the playbook and freelancing in a position they weren’t built for. Behind the scenes, the dynamics tell a different story, but on the surface, it looks like a failure of strategy. That’s why role clarity isn’t optional. It’s protection. For the project, for the people doing the work, and for the strategist tasked with holding the bigger picture together.

Community Is Strategy

One thing the league taught me is that community isn’t an accident — it’s a form of strategy. People got to know each other, not just in the league but outside of it. Conversations spilled out of our private group into real friendships and collaborations. That kind of bond didn’t require me to be in the middle; it happened because we created a space where women could show up, be themselves and create bonds outside of the games.

And let’s be clear: strategy isn’t transactional. Community isn’t built by dropping into someone’s DMs to ask how they’re doing and then pivoting to sell them your latest package. Community is what grows when people feel like they belong, when they’re in relationship beyond the transaction. That’s why the league mattered, and why I design strategy the way I do now. Real strategy doesn’t just deliver outcomes; it builds ecosystems that thrive beyond you.

Accountability Protects the System

Another lesson I carry is about accountability. Too often, projects derail because someone steps into a role they can’t actually play — and when things fall apart, the strategist is the one who gets blamed. I see it constantly: behind the scenes, the dynamics are clear, but on the surface it looks like the strategy failed.

The truth is, accountability is what protects the system. In football, if a cornerback freelances and tries to play lineman, the whole defense suffers. In consulting, if someone ignores the playbook and decides they know better, the project stalls and credibility gets pinned on the wrong person. Accountability means respecting the roles, owning your lane, and recognizing that the strategist isn’t the scapegoat — they’re the one holding the bigger picture together.

Looking Back

The league gave me laughter, community, and some of the best trash talk I’ve ever witnessed. But it also gave me my first glimpse into the power of playbooks. Strategy is the vision, the game plan. The playbook is the implementation plan that makes it real. Without it, strategy stays lofty and abstract. With it, you have documentation, clarity, and a way forward even when the game changes.

And this is where I want to be clear: strategy is not bullshit. It’s not the empty slide decks or jargon-heavy consulting you see mocked on shows like House of Lies. Real strategy isn’t about smoke and mirrors. It’s about vision tied to implementation, community tied to accountability, documentation tied to flexibility. It’s about building systems that not only work on paper but actually hold when the game gets messy.

That’s why strategy needs playbooks. Without them, you’re just running around the field, hoping someone knows where the end zone is. With them, you have a team that knows the goal, understands the roles, and can adapt together when the unexpected shows up.

If you had to write your own playbook — for work, for life, for anything — what’s the first thing you’d put in it?