Strategy is not about making choices.
The idea that we calmly select from a menu of rational choices is a fantasy. The future is too uncertain, and our grasp of the present is often incomplete.
In reality, most leaders are making it up as they go along — reacting to crises, doubling down on accidental wins, and seizing lucky breaks: sudden market shifts, rivals stumbling, customer needs changing overnight.
Success doesn’t come from predicting these waves — it comes from riding them.
Yet the consulting industry takes messy, stumbling journeys that happened to succeed and repackages them as slick case studies with masterplans you’re meant to follow.
They target leaders under pressure — drowning in problems, feeling like their luck has run out. And the promise of rigorous analysis and a winning plan is hard to resist.
But there’s another way.
Great leaders don’t just make choices — they create options.
They get closer to the action. They listen to those on the ground. And they encourage people to think for themselves — rather than outsourcing it to others.
Most importantly, when they spot something that works, they move fast — re-directing resources from what isn’t working to what is.
This is what innovating through a crisis looks like https://powermaps.net/tpost/462t9oz9c1-chapter-5-innovating-out-of-a-crisis. It’s relentless. Messy. Exhausting. But it works.
What many call “being tactical” — focusing on the next best moves and adapting as they go — is actually strategy in its purest form.
Once you see it, you can’t un-see it.
In this blog series, I’m unpacking this evolving approach to strategy — and showing how you can use it too.
Follow the series by subscribing to the blog: https://powermaps.net/blog
The idea that we calmly select from a menu of rational choices is a fantasy. The future is too uncertain, and our grasp of the present is often incomplete.
In reality, most leaders are making it up as they go along — reacting to crises, doubling down on accidental wins, and seizing lucky breaks: sudden market shifts, rivals stumbling, customer needs changing overnight.
Success doesn’t come from predicting these waves — it comes from riding them.
Yet the consulting industry takes messy, stumbling journeys that happened to succeed and repackages them as slick case studies with masterplans you’re meant to follow.
They target leaders under pressure — drowning in problems, feeling like their luck has run out. And the promise of rigorous analysis and a winning plan is hard to resist.
But there’s another way.
Great leaders don’t just make choices — they create options.
They get closer to the action. They listen to those on the ground. And they encourage people to think for themselves — rather than outsourcing it to others.
Most importantly, when they spot something that works, they move fast — re-directing resources from what isn’t working to what is.
This is what innovating through a crisis looks like https://powermaps.net/tpost/462t9oz9c1-chapter-5-innovating-out-of-a-crisis. It’s relentless. Messy. Exhausting. But it works.
What many call “being tactical” — focusing on the next best moves and adapting as they go — is actually strategy in its purest form.
Once you see it, you can’t un-see it.
In this blog series, I’m unpacking this evolving approach to strategy — and showing how you can use it too.
Follow the series by subscribing to the blog: https://powermaps.net/blog
