Strategy is Breaking—And We Need Better Questions, Not Just Faster Answers

Here’s what I think needs to be addressed right now—more than ever:

Strategy, as it's practiced in many organizations today, is struggling to keep up with the pace, ambiguity, and complexity of the present moment. Not because people aren’t smart, committed, or resourceful—but because the mental models and planning architectures we continue to use are misaligned with the nature of the problems we now face.

Too often, we inherit strategic frameworks that assume a linear progression from insight to plan to execution. But in reality, business problems are increasingly nonlinear, dynamic, and entangled. Inputs are shifting in real time. Data is abundant but often contradictory. Consumer sentiment is fluid. And the tools we use to make sense of it all—dashboards, workshops, slides, forecasts—aren’t equipped to surface the deeper structural misalignments that hold organizations back.

This matters because when strategy begins from the wrong premise—when the problem is misdiagnosed—every subsequent decision compounds that error. Investment, innovation, marketing, culture… all of it moves in the wrong direction, even if executed perfectly.

The result is a pattern many of us have seen firsthand: stalled growth despite big spending. Flatline differentiation in markets saturated with effort. Initiatives that feel right on paper but fail to move the needle. Boards asking the wrong questions. Teams chasing the wrong metrics. Agencies shipping messaging that doesn’t stick.

What’s needed is not more content or more tools. It’s a deeper recalibration of how we frame problems, surface insight, and structure strategy.

Over the next five posts, I’ll be exploring:

• Why ineffective problem framing is the root cause of most strategic underperformance

• A new methodology—Recalibration Impact Methodology (RIM)—designed for speed, adaptability, and AI integration

• A set of five diagnostic forces that form a new strategic operating system

• Cross-industry use cases that show how recalibration works in the real world

• How agentic AI is beginning to redefine the future of brand and strategic relevance

The intent is not to add noise to the system—but to offer a clearer lens. Not another playbook—but a different way of seeing.

Let’s start by interrogating the assumptions baked into our strategies—before we keep scaling the wrong things faster.