Most strategy content frustrates me. Not because it’s wrong — because it’s unfocused. Endless frameworks, hot takes, thought leadership that leads nowhere in particular. I wanted to do something different.
Two questions. That’s all this was supposed to be. What is strategy? And why does it matter?
I knew immediately those weren’t questions I could answer in a post or two. So I mapped out a curriculum — twelve fault lines, one per week, each one a tension or contradiction at the heart of how leaders and organizations actually think about strategy. The goal was simple: if someone followed along, they’d come out the other side a better strategist. Not because I’d given them a framework, but because they’d spent twelve weeks inside the patterns that actually run the game.
What I didn’t expect was what it would do to me.
The fault lines started showing up everywhere. In conversations with peers and leaders about market dynamics and organizational challenges, I found I could structure my thinking in the moment, name the pattern clearly, and, more than once, watch the other person see their own situation differently as a result. Not because I gave them an answer. Because I had language for what they were already living.
That’s what a good curriculum actually does. It doesn’t fill you with new ideas. It sharpens the lens you already have.
The thing that surprised me most was how my thinking about coaching changed. I’d quietly given it up — or at least deprioritized it. Consulting felt more direct, more useful. But eleven weeks of sitting inside fault lines changed that read.
Strategy isn’t something you can stuff into someone’s head. You can talk about it, dish out advice, build decks and frameworks — and it might land, or it might not. Leaders have their own notion of how strategy works and how it applies to their situation. When you coach, you’re not telling people what to do. You’re reasoning with them. Helping them see through the clutter. Not by loading them with new ideas, but by questioning the logic of what they’re already working on — and whether it’s actually working.
That’s not a different skill from strategy. That’s strategy, applied to a person instead of an organization.
Twelve weeks ago, I thought I was building a curriculum about strategy. What I actually built was a lens. And the lens, it turns out, works on everything.
P.S. This is week twelve of a twelve-week curriculum exploring the fault lines that run through strategy, leadership, and organizational life. If this landed, start at the beginning — The Fluff Illusion is where it all started. And if you want the weekly essays that go deeper than the blog posts, subscribe to The Blind Spot — they go out every Sunday.