When Reality Refuses to Negotiate

Bend, Don’t Break

Living on water for a week teaches you to read rather than resist.

On our catamaran in the Greek Islands just recently, I learned that fighting a crosswind or a current gets us nowhere fast. One night when we were docked in a picturesque little harbour, winds caused choppy waves that made our night-time nest bob around like a cork, creaking and groaning.

Water doesn't negotiate.

The Dutch figured this out centuries ago, though it took some catastrophic reminders. In the 1990s, floods forced the evacuation of 250,000 people and a million animals, and the damage bill hit €400 million. Instead of building higher walls, they launched something audacious: a €2.3 billion "Room for the River" program, giving rivers “permission” to flood 34 specific locations across four major waterways.

But here's the genius part: they got 19 partners (including the provinces, municipalities, regional water authorities and the state Rijkswaterstaat) to all agree to buy agricultural land from (initially furious) farmers. They converted this into zones that flood when storms hit, protecting cities downstream. Today, the system safely handles 16,000 cubic meters of water per second (imagine 16,000 bathtubs emptying every second) and in the coming decades it will cope with even higher discharges due to the forecast climate changes.

Question: Where are you building protective walls against large forces instead of creating space for them to flow through you?

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The Futurologist’s Dilemma

Aged 15, I wanted to be a futurologist. This was 1980, and I was certain that by the year 2000 humans would have explored our solar system and planes faster than the Concorde would criss-cross the globe. While we were doing this, we’d have eliminated starvation. Oh, and nuclear weapons.

I got none of it right.

But the Cold War ended, the internet happened, and China developed a middle class.

I got none of that right either.

Here's the strategic insight I missed: my predictions revealed everything about my worldview and nothing about the future. I was extrapolating from 1980s assumptions, blind to paradigm shifts I couldn't imagine.

This same myopia plagues some companies.

I recently encountered a healthcare organisation that had only just weaned itself from fax machines, it was still spreadsheet-dependent and, needless to say, gets nearly all its funding from item numbers tied to individual provision of care ‘encounters’. Yet they'd recently published a "Strategic Readiness Forecast" promising telemedicine everywhere, AI diagnosis, and seamless data integration.

The disconnect was staggering. Their vision assumed three barely-possible leaps: that IT infrastructure would appear, that staff (and patients) would embrace radical change overnight, and that funders would suddenly pay for multi-disciplinary team-based care outcomes.

They'd fallen in love with a destination without mapping the journey.

The point I’m making is this: the real strategic value of forecasting isn't prediction — it's revelation. It’s vital to name our assumptions about the future, as it will expose the invisible foundations on which our entire strategy rests. The best organisations reveal that their "bold vision" needs to built on much more than quicksand; it needs to be carefully constructed bridge by bridge from where they actually stand today.

Question: If your most critical assumption about the future proved wrong tomorrow, would your strategy collapse or adapt?

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Can You Fake Respect?

Salman Khan thinks you can't. The Khan Academy founder just launched a program where teenagers voluntarily debate gun control, immigration, and AI with peers who disagree with them.

Why am I telling you this? Because the big news is that universities like MIT and Johns Hopkins are now accepting students’ "civility transcripts" in admissions decisions. They know that grades don’t tell the full story. And essays can be gamed, especially with AI.

"But I don't think you can truly fake respect," Khan argues. "You have to have real respect; otherwise the other party can tell."

Jim Nondorf at the University of Chicago agrees with the sentiment that universities don’t want students who fall into ‘outrage cycles’: "I don't want brittle students. I want students who can come here and add to the conversation on campus, but do it in the right way."

This debate fascinates me because I see organisations wrestling with ‘brittleness’ every day. Most months, I end up facilitating at least one "difficult conversation" for a leadership team who've been avoiding a contentious existential issue for months. I can help them have the real conversations — but, after I leave, I wonder: are they genuinely more respectful, or just better at performing respectfulness?

Maybe it doesn't matter. The 600 students in Khan's pilot logged 2,000 hours of discussion with virtually no incidents of people yelling at each other, despite tackling explosive topics. Whether it's "real" respect or skilfully performed civility, the outcome is productive dialogue instead of destructive polarisation.

Perhaps the more strategic question isn't whether respect can be faked, but whether creating structures that demand respectful engagement eventually cultivates the real thing.

Question: What systems in your organisation reward performative harmony over genuine productive disagreement?

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That's it for this week's strategic meandering.

If any of these questions made you squirm a little, then I’m happy. Hit the heart if you enjoyed the read, and drop me a line in the comments if you've got examples of organisations doing this well (or spectacularly badly). I'm always collecting material for next week's adventure in strategic thinking.

I'll see you next Friday with three more ways to flex your strategic muscles.

Andrew