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.

Together, these elements provide a multidimensional view that reframes strategy as an exercise in perception, not prediction.

The simple act of decoding the forces affecting their businesses can help leaders see what’s accelerating their efforts or holding them back and where to focus their attention. In a world of complexity, this is sensemaking. It encourages leaders to then ask a series of questions: What forces are at play? Which are hidden or underestimated? How do they interact? Which matter most now — and which will matter more later?

From Misperception to Informed Action

What the forces at work framework does best is reveal the dynamic field in which a leader is operating. It makes solvable three common leadership problems:

• Misplaced attention. This results from chasing what’s loudest, not what matters most, and tracking headlines instead of understanding patterns.
• Overreaction or paralysis. This dynamic involves mistaking noise for signal or signal for chaos, and swinging wildly or freezing when there’s no clarity on what’s enduring versus fleeting.
• Misaligned timelines. This results from ignoring the long term while overcorrecting in the short term, and derailing strategic progress because of short-term shocks.

By surfacing these dynamics visually and conceptually, the framework gives leaders a shared map and a new language for navigating change.

Once a force has been mapped, the right response becomes clearer: For continental drifts, a leader wants to align decisions to high-impact events early and invest in capacity; for lightning strikes, it’s important to move quickly but without overcorrecting; for smoldering embers, the task is to monitor and test; and for surface ripples, you want to acknowledge situations on the landscape, but without overindexing. This is also a good time to think about the nature of the force that’s affecting the situation: Is it enduring or ephemeral? Visible or hidden? A tailwind or headwind? A leading or a lagging indicator? Thinking about its nature helps not just to identify what forces are present but to assess their strategic weights and interactions.

Whether navigating technology disruption, global instability, or internal transformation, with this framework the question is no longer “What should we do?” but “What forces are at work, and how do we work with or against them?” Leaders can then ask more detailed and situation-specific questions to move forward, including the following:

• Can we harness it? Are there tailwinds that can be used to accelerate a situation?
• Should we bend it? Are there headwinds that can be reframed or negotiated?
• Must we handle it? What are the structural, immutable forces we can’t change but must navigate?
• Can we ignore it? Is this just ephemeral noise that distracts more than it directs?

Let me share three examples of companies, teams, and individuals I worked with who applied this framework. The first was a global consumer goods company that needed strategic clarity about crises that kept arising; the second was a private equity firm that was pursuing better timing; and the third was a C-suite leader who was navigating her career in a time of flux.

The consumer goods company was caught in a reactive mode in responding to constant crises. Quarterly earnings pressure, ESG expectations, and shifting consumer sentiment had collided, overwhelming its C-suite. When I introduced the forces at work framework, we surfaced dozens of dynamics and then mapped them. A clear pattern emerged: Many “crises” were actually surface ripples, while a few overlooked factors — such as resource constraints and changes in customer characteristics — were continental drifts. This reframing helped leadership refocus $30 million in planned spending on long-term capacity-building rather than on reactive marketing and internal firefighting.

The private equity team was evaluating an educational technology acquisition and leaning in hard based on the company’s impressive revenue spikes. But applying the forces lens revealed that much of the company’s growth was a lightning strike triggered by COVID-era schooling gaps. The more telling force — slow but steady adoption of hybrid learning tools — was a smoldering ember. This aspect of the company’s expected growth wasn’t on fire yet. After performing the analysis, the equity firm paused the acquisition deal; it decided to monitor hybrid adoption curves and explore other options rather than overpay in a hype window.

Jessica Hatch, a senior executive at Amazon Web Services, was sensing dissonance in her role. Her organization was pivoting, but she felt stagnant. Using the forces model, we mapped external and internal forces that she saw at play within the company: the rise of fractional leadership, declining middle-management leverage, and structural shifts from reorganization. Together, they pointed to a broader drift toward flexible, high-level talent. With that new understanding, she was able to reshape what initially felt like personal stagnation into an opportunity to design a portfolio career aligned with the emerging terrain. “Once I saw the bigger pattern, I realized it wasn’t just me — it was the system shifting,” she said. “That perspective turned what felt like drift into a chance to reimagine my own path.”

What makes the forces at work framework powerful is that it challenges a flawed, taken-for-granted assumption: that strategy starts with predication, or that strategic strength comes from forecasting or planning. It doesn’t.

In today’s environment, strategic strength comes from learning to see differently — to name the invisible, to surface the underestimated, and to move with clarity in motion. Once you name the forces at work and understand their nature, you can stop reacting. You can start leading.