The one on time
And fundamental aspects of strategy
Friends,
I hope that all is well with you and yours, and that this e-mail finds you on a boat with shoddy connection, in the tropics, three months after I sent it.
Now accepting speeches and assignments for 2026
THE 2026 KEYNOTE DECKS
When the ground moves. How to survive and thrive in a world of uncertainty. (Based on a new book by the same name.)
What to do when you don’t know what to do. How to create a competitive advantage from change. (Based on the new book by the same name.)
From last to first. How to create peak performance in the world’s most competitive settings. (On adaptive strategy in F1.)
The volcano that birthed Frankenstein. How contexts enable innovation — and how to take make the most of it. (A narrative-based talk on global interconnectedness and enabling constraints.)
THE 2026 SERVICE OFFERING
Strategic guidance. Formulation, audits, the ABCDE framework, fractional CSO, knowledge workshops.
Uncertainty management. Dynamic uncertainty, executive decision-making, knowledge workshops.
Marketing guidance. Strategy, fractional CMO, knowledge workshops.
Teaching. Onsite lectures, offsites, knowledge workshops.
For any and all project inquiries, including presentations, merely send me an email by clicking this text.
The TL;DR
The obvious answers to one of strategy’s most important questions do not survive scrutiny; they are either too universal to be useful in practice or confuse outcomes with strategy itself.
Strategy, at its core, is about managing uncertainty over time to move in a wanted direction, but time also changes the uncertainty firms must face in scope, scale, and nature.
Even known probabilities are not stable: repeated action can alter the underlying system, turning that which is believed to be predictable into something that is not.
Assumptions have a half-life. Strategy becomes fragile when firms treat different assumptions as having identical durability.
Decisions have latency. When the firm’s tempo lags the world’s tempo, feedback delays become exposure.
Personal updates before we go-go
As lovely as it unquestionably is to have the children at home, I cannot lie: the combination of bronchitis, the blizzard of the century, and kids looking to be constantly entertained took its toll. I already miss them — but it is also rather nice that they are back in kindergarten.
Having said that, we might decide to take them up north for some snowboarding next week. The snow conditions are excellent.
Decided to get Disney+ again; Child #1 is old enough now to start watching some of their movies. We are immensely careful with screen time, and neither she nor her sister have iPads or get to play with our phones. But a movie every month or two should be OK. I hope.
On a semi-related note, two observations:
Wowza, is The Simpsons ever a shadow of its former self. Watched a couple of episodes from the latest series. A straight-faced experience if there ever was one. Not even a smirk.
Began watching Andor season two. Had heard great things. The first episode was so poorly written that it came across as though penned by someone having a go for the very first time. I mean, the script was just a-w-f-u-l. Basic errors, clunky dialogue, caricatured characters, unrealistic choices, narrative inconsistencies, thematic blunders, plainly silly series of events; the proverbial list went on. And on.
I mean, I get that the show is the offspring of a former Oscar-nominated screenplay writer, but Jesus Kenneth Christ on a unicycle juggling chainsaws and kittens. It had better pick up from this.
The number of emails I have gotten of late from people claiming to want to give me awards has been astonishing. To be clear, I do not believe any of them. Are people really so desperate for accolades that they become a legit target for spammers and fraudsters?
I take that back. Of course they are.
Moving on to markets.