Strategy Sickness
Everywhere I go, leaders are exhausted. They’ve read the books, hired the consultants, run the playbooks — and they’re still stuck. Not because they don’t have a strategy, but because they’ve been living on a steady diet of them.
We’ve become strategy-sick: sick of strategy because it keeps overpromising and underdelivering, and sick from strategy because it’s slowly poisoning how we think, lead, and live.
Strategy was meant to be a tool for focus. Instead, it’s become a treadmill of reinvention — every quarter a new mantra, every offsite a new map. We’re trying to fix fatigue with more frameworks.
Patterns I See
Addictive planning: Every problem triggers another offsite, another “refresh,” another model.
Consultant dependency: Leaders outsource thinking and call it insight.
Over-optimization: Systems so engineered they lose adaptability.
Chronic rebranding: Constant “new directions” that change language, not behavior.
What Leaders Miss
Most leaders don’t have a strategy problem. They have a wisdom problem. Strategy without wisdom is noise. It’s the illusion of control in a complex world that refuses to be controlled. When you use strategy as anesthesia — to numb uncertainty — it slowly erodes your ability to discern.
You can’t outsource wisdom. You have to cultivate it. That means learning to sit in ambiguity without panicking, asking better questions instead of demanding faster answers, and treating reflection like a core leadership discipline.
Strategy works until it doesn’t. When it stops, most people double down. Wise leaders detox.
Working With It
Slow down the strategy cycle. Stop changing plans faster than people can metabolize them.
Purge the jargon. Clear language = clear thinking. Drop the buzzwords.
Reintroduce reflection. Build regular rhythms for deep thinking — not just doing.
Anchor to purpose. Reconnect strategy to meaning, not just motion.
Measure wisdom. Ask not just “Did it work?” but “Did it make us wiser?”
Questions Worth Asking
Am I using strategy to avoid facing reality?
What do I keep re-strategizing because I don’t want to make a hard decision?
When was the last time we stopped to ask if this plan still fits us?
What would leading look like if I trusted wisdom more than process?
Field Truth
Strategy won’t save you. Wisdom will.
And until you detox from strategy sickness, you’ll keep mistaking movement for meaning.
