Strategy Isn’t Broken. Our Thinking Is: Why Strategy Today Is About SIGNAL, Not Control

This year, I have been thinking hard. I’ve concerned myself a lot with thinking about strategy and leadership. For much of history, strategy was built on an assumption of relative stability. Decision-makers believed that if you gathered enough data, applied enough logic, and planned far enough ahead, you could control outcomes. Armies marched in formation, corporations planned in five-year cycles, and leaders were rewarded for being decisive rather than adaptive.

That world no longer exists.

Today’s environment is shaped by volatility, perception, behavioural bias, and speed. Decisions are made not only on facts, but on narratives, identity, and trust. Influence travels faster than instruction. And often, the winner is not the most rational actor, but the one who best understands how people actually decide.

This is the context in which I developed the SIGNAL Framework: not as a technical planning tool, but as a practical way to think clearly when certainty has disappeared.

SIGNAL reflects how decision-making has evolved from control to sense-making, from prediction to adaptation, and from logic alone to logic combined with psychology.

S — Situation Intelligence: Knowing More Than the Obvious

Traditional strategy starts with analysis, but often mistakes data for understanding. Situation Intelligence goes further. It asks not only what is happening, but why people behave the way they do within that situation.

Consider how Nokia lost its dominance in mobile phones. The company had market data, engineering excellence, and scale. What it misread was the psychological shift: phones were no longer tools, they were becoming identity objects. Apple understood this shift intuitively. Nokia analysed the market; Apple understood the situation.

Situation Intelligence means reading culture, incentives, fear, status, and informal power, not just balance sheets and market shares. In modern decision-making, those invisible forces often matter more than formal ones.

I — Intent & Vision: Strategy as a Source of Meaning

In the past, intent was about objectives. Today, intent is about belief.

People no longer mobilise around plans alone; they mobilise around meaning. A strategy that does not help people understand why this matters will struggle to execute, no matter how sound it looks on paper.

Take Patagonia. Its intent is not simply to sell outdoor clothing, but to signal environmental responsibility and ethical consumption. Customers buy not just a jacket, but a statement about who they are. Employees work not just for pay, but for alignment.

Clear intent reduces friction in decision-making. When people understand the underlying “why,” they can act independently without constant instruction. In complex environments, this is a decisive advantage.

G — Game-Changing Positioning: Winning Without Fighting

Classic competition focuses on outperforming rivals. Game-changing positioning focuses on redefining the game itself.

Netflix did not beat Blockbuster by running better video stores. It changed the question from “Which store has the movie?” to “Why do I need a store at all?” Later, it did the same to cable television.

This is the strategic power of positioning: when done well, competitors become irrelevant rather than threatening. The SIGNAL framework emphasises positioning that is psychological as well as functional. If customers compare you directly with others, you have already lost leverage.

N — Nimble Execution: Speed Over Perfection

In stable environments, optimisation wins. In unstable ones, speed and adaptability win. Nimble execution recognises that most strategies fail not because they are wrong, but because they are too slow or too rigid. Decision-making must move closer to the front line, guided by clear intent rather than micromanagement.

Amazon’s principle of “two-way door decisions” is a strong example. If a decision is reversible, make it quickly. Learn, adjust, move again. This bias toward action allows organisations to out-learn competitors, even when individual decisions are imperfect.

In SIGNAL, execution is not the final step. It is a continuous loop of action, feedback, and adjustment.

A — Alchemy Opportunities: Small Changes, Outsized Impact

One of the most misunderstood aspects of strategy is where value actually comes from. We often assume breakthroughs require massive investments or radical innovation. In reality, small contextual shifts can create disproportionate results.

When Uber removed the need to pay at the end of a ride, it didn’t just improve convenience; it removed psychological friction. The experience felt magical, even though the technology itself was not revolutionary.

Alchemy is about reframing problems, not just solving them. It asks: What small change could unlock a big behavioural response? Leaders who understand this stop over-engineering solutions and start redesigning experiences.

L — Learning System: Strategy as a Living Practice

Finally, SIGNAL treats strategy not as a document, but as a learning system.

In fast-changing environments, the ability to learn faster than competitors is the ultimate advantage. This requires feedback loops, honest metrics, and cultures that reward insight over hierarchy.

Genghis Khan’s empire expanded not just through conquest, but through rapid learning and meritocracy. Commanders were promoted based on results, not status. Information also flowed upward, not just downward.

Modern organisations often fail here. They collect data, but ignore uncomfortable signals. SIGNAL insists that learning is not optional; it is structural.

The Strategic Advantage No One Can Copy

The most dangerous assumption in strategy today is that the world will slow down long enough for us to be certain. It will not.

What separates effective leaders from overwhelmed ones is no longer access to information, sophisticated models, or flawless plans. It is the ability to interpret signals, act with intent, and adapt faster than the environment shifts. In that sense, strategy has stopped being an exercise in prediction and has become a discipline of sense-making.

The SIGNAL Framework does not promise control. It offers something far more valuable: orientation. It helps leaders see clearly when the map no longer matches the terrain, when behaviour matters more than data, and when speed matters more than elegance. It recognises that decisions are made by humans, not spreadsheets, and that perception, identity, and emotion now shape outcomes as much as logic ever did.

In an era where competitors can copy products, technology, and even business models, what cannot be replicated is how well you understand your situation, how clearly you articulate intent, how boldly you reposition the game, how quickly you move, how creatively you reframe problems, and how relentlessly you learn. Those capabilities compound. Together, they become SIGNAL.

The future will not belong to the most certain organisations. It will belong to those who are most attuned. Those who can read weak signals before they become obvious truths, act without waiting for perfect clarity, and adjust without losing coherence.

Strategy, in its truest form, has always been about advantage under uncertainty. SIGNAL simply names the discipline required to practice it now.

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