Serious? You just do it. Barlow or Mayne or Johnson would of got pick upgrades after the years they had. FMD even the filth added Redden and Jetta after losing a GF because they are short on midfield talent. We should of done the same with KPP players and if you think not you are seriously deluded.
Basically, if you get to a GF and don't win then you have to do a "mini" rebuild to get you there again addressing your weeknessnes
Errr Redden was exchanged for a first round pick and Jetta a swap for a player with currency. That would seem to support my argument not yours. If we had a player outside our best 22 worth Lewis Jetta, name them.
In any case you were talking about pick upgrades to acquire talls in the draft. Say swapping Barlow and pick 17 in 2013 for pick 9 or something. How would that have helped us win the flag in 2014? A first year key defender who might not make it is the difference maker?
Your plan only works if our recruiters can guarantee a player will be a instant star (impossible), but no other recruiting team can see this (impossible) except the teams with picks 11 to 14, so we must trade to in front of them (now it's just getting silly)
Given what we had and what we were trying to achieve we didn't really do anything that wrong with our trading and list management 2011 to 2014.
(2015 is a different story and I think we should have cut fringe players more aggressively and gambled on an injury free season, but everyone's an expert in hindsight)