Conventional wisdom holds that strategic decisions are made through rational, objective analysis, leveraging experience and algorithms rather than emotions.
The truth is that almost all strategic decision-making journeys are distorted by “noise,” groupthink, and internal political battles driven by the messy, flawed, and biased humans actually sitting in the room.
I used to think algorithms were a reliable tool to cut out the noise. Turns out that over-reliance on algorithms can be just as noisy as over-reliance on experience or the collective wisdom of a room that’s got work to do.
So, if experience doesn’t filter noise and algorithms only replace one kind of bias with another — what’s actually left?
Which is why I’m starting to think strategy isn’t about objective and rational analysis at all — it’s actually the ability to filter out the noise without killing the human energy required to execute.