Decode Competing Signals to Act Strategically

There’s a quiet crisis in strategy today. Most executives assume that if they scan hard enough, analyze deeply enough, or plan thoroughly enough, a path forward will reveal itself. But that’s an illusion left over from a more stable era. I’ve spent years working with Fortune 100 leaders, founders, investors, and policy makers in moments of high-stakes uncertainty. Again and again, I’ve watched smart people get stuck not because they lacked insight but because they couldn’t interpret competing signals.

Strategy doesn’t start with prediction. It starts with perception, especially in environments where signals conflict, timelines collide, and consequences compound.

At its core, strategy focuses on two questions: “What forces are shaping this situation?” and “How should we respond?” Specifically, it takes into account two types of forces at work and their natures: the time horizon of a situation, from short term to long term, and the impact level of that situation, from low to high. Once leaders learn to see these forces, they can stop simply reacting and start understanding. The complexity doesn’t go away, but it becomes navigable.

Strategic Clarity in a World of Flux

The strategy framework I’ve developed comes from my years as an investor and adviser, and as a teacher to executive audiences. I think of it as a lens for seeing a challenge more clearly.

The forces at work framework maps the forces that affect strategic decision-making across the two simple dimensions of time horizon and impact level. (See “The Forces at Work: Weighing Time Horizon and Impact Level.”) These two dimensions produce four categories that help frame strategic conditions: continental drifts, which are slow-moving, high-impact structural shifts; lightning strikes, which are fast, disruptive shocks; smoldering embers, which are quiet but accumulating pressures; and surface ripples, which are distractions that often appear to be larger than they actually are.