I’ve been thinking about how most leaders approach strategy, and there’s a pattern that keeps bothering me. They either get obsessed with quarterly results or they romance themselves with 100-year visions. Both approaches miss something fundamental about how real progress actually works.
It reminds me of learning Jiu-Jitsu. Every beginner wants to skip the basics and jump straight to the flashy moves they see in competition. They want the long-wave mastery without understanding that it’s built entirely on short-wave fundamentals. You can’t execute a complex submission if you haven’t mastered basic positioning, breathing, and leverage. The layers compound—each fundamental skill becomes the foundation for the next level.
Technology and business strategy work the same way. Progress happens in waves, and most leaders completely misunderstand how these waves relate to each other.
Here’s what I’ve observed: smaller companies should focus almost exclusively on short waves. They need to nail the fundamentals—reduce costs, improve delivery, solve immediate customer problems. These short waves reveal what actually works and what doesn’t. They build the capability foundation that eventually enables longer-term plays.
Larger organizations have the luxury of thinking in longer waves, but they still execute through short-wave increments. The mistake they make is assuming long-wave thinking means they can skip short-wave execution.
Tesla figured this out. They didn’t start by announcing they’d revolutionize transportation. They started with one expensive sports car, learned how to make electric vehicles actually work, then gradually expanded their capability wave by wave. The Model S built on Roadster learnings. The Model 3 built on Model S systems. The Cybertruck builds on everything before it.
Compare that to the dozens of EV startups that announced grand visions and raised billions based on long-wave promises. Most never shipped a single car because they tried to skip the fundamental short waves.
The same pattern shows up everywhere. Amazon started by selling books online—one short wave focused on nailing e-commerce basics. Only after mastering that did they expand into everything else. Netflix started with DVDs by mail, mastered logistics and customer data, then used those capabilities for streaming.
What strikes me is how predictable the near future actually is versus how unpredictable the distant future becomes. I can make reasonable bets about what technology will look like in five to seven years. Beyond that? It’s mostly speculation.
Smart leaders work within this constraint. They make long-term bets on direction while staying ruthlessly focused on short-term execution. They understand that consistent performance in shorter waves compounds over time into something that looks like long-term vision.
The companies that fail? They either get trapped optimizing for this quarter’s numbers or they get lost dreaming about decades-away possibilities. They miss the sweet spot where long-term direction meets short-term capability building.
Most strategy discussions I see make this mistake. They either dive into quarterly tactics or float up into visionary abstractions. The real work happens in the middle—understanding which short waves to ride while keeping your eye on where the longer waves are heading.
The question isn’t whether you should focus on short waves or long waves. It’s whether you understand how they build on each other, and whether you’re disciplined enough to excel at both simultaneously.
Where are you building your fundamentals? And what longer wave are you preparing for?