too many strategy consultants are selling outdated thinking dressed up in modern language. They’re failing their clients. Not subtly. Not accidentally. Openly.

Some things are easier to deny than to fix. When intelligent systems work well, they create surplus capacity. And when that happens, the default corporate response is as predictable as it is destructive, cut costs. That's exactly where businesses break their own systems.

In the software world and particularly SaaS, features don’t differentiate, experience does. You can match every feature your competitors offer and still lose. Not because your product is worse, but because it feels harder to use, slower to deliver value, or just less thoughtful.

It always starts with clarity. A company is founded to solve a specific, painful problem. The early roadmap is crisp. Focused. Built on urgency and direct feedback from real users trying to get real things done. And then, success. Customers come in. Revenue grows. The roadmap expands.

Fraud used to be limited by human effort. You could spot the broken English in the phishing email. You could hear the hesitation in the voice. You could flag the dodgy PDF with the pixelated invoice. But now?

leadership in a complex business isn’t linear. It’s not even rational in the strictest sense. It’s a real-time collision of context, competing priorities, and partial information. Decisions don’t arrive in order, they come in waves. Many are interdependent.