The Top Notes Are a Lie

The laser pointer is jittering against the screen, casting a small, frantic red dot over a bar chart that supposedly predicts our revenue for Q4 of 2024. I am trying to explain the ‘omnichannel synergy’ of our third pillar, but my diaphragm has decided to stage a minor insurrection. Each time I inhale to deliver a definitive statement about market penetration, a sharp, involuntary hiccup escapes. It is rhythmic, absurd, and deeply humbling. The Vice President of Operations is staring at me with a mixture of pity and impatience, while 14 other executives pretend to study their cuticles. The irony is thick enough to choke on: here I am, presenting a 54-page ‘bulletproof’ strategic deck, and I cannot even control my own vocal cords for more than 4 seconds at a time.

We finally get to page 44, the one with the complex Venn diagram illustrating how our digital presence will merge with physical retail touchpoints. I realize, in a moment of clarity brought on by the sheer embarrassment of my internal spasms, that nobody in this room has actually read the previous 43 pages. They aren’t even reading this one. They are looking at the colors. They are looking at the ‘Executive Summary’ and nodding because it feels safe to agree with a document that looks expensive. We spent 4 months and roughly $44,444 in internal labor hours crafting this artifact, and by the time the ink was dry on the PDF, the market had already shifted. A competitor launched a disruptive app 14 days ago, a supply chain bottleneck opened up in the Pacific, and the very ‘core assumptions’ we built this on are now as relevant as a map of Pangea.

‘The top notes are a lie,’ Rio said, swirling a glass of amber liquid that smelled faintly of damp earth and burnt sugar. ‘But the strategy of a scent-the way it lives on the skin for 24 hours-that is the base notes. You cannot capture the base notes in a photograph.’ Business strategy is exactly the same. We spend all our energy on the ‘top notes’-the flashy presentation, the bold declarations, the 50-page deck that smells of success and fresh toner. But we ignore the dry-down. We ignore how the plan actually interacts with the heat of the real world, with the sweat of the sales floor, and the unpredictable chemistry of the consumer.

Strategy as Weather, Not Mountain

[The document is a tombstone for a dead conversation.] I’ve seen this happen in 104 different boardrooms. The document becomes the goal, rather than the guidance. We treat the strategic plan as a static, one-time event-a mountain we climb once a year, plant a flag, and then descend from to return to our ‘real work.’ But strategy isn’t a mountain; it’s the weather. It’s a continuous process of sensing and responding.

When I was consulting for a large retail group, they insisted on a 144-page manual for every store manager. It covered everything from shelf height to the exact temperature of the breakroom. It was beautiful. It was comprehensive. It was also found holding up a wobbly table in the storage room of 84% of the locations. The managers didn’t need a manual; they needed a pulse. They needed the ability to see that the weather was changing and the permission to move the umbrellas to the front of the store without waiting for a revised PDF from corporate.

The Digital Nervous System

This is where the ‘clicks-and-mortar’ models, like what you see with Bomba.md, actually find their footing. They don’t just survive on a static plan written in January; they survive because their digital and physical presence acts as a nervous system. If a specific model of television starts trending on social media at 4:14 PM, that information needs to flow through the system immediately, not wait for the next quarterly review. A 50-page deck is too heavy to move that fast. It’s a lead weight tied to the ankle of a sprinter. We mistake the ‘artifact’ of strategy-the document itself-for the ‘activity’ of strategy.

The value isn’t in the 44 slides; the value was in the 14 meetings where people actually argued, disagreed, and finally aligned on what they cared about. The document is just the residue of that conversation, yet we treat it like the Holy Grail.

Driving into the Lake

I remember one specific failure of mine-I’m not proud of it, but it’s illustrative. I had designed a ‘perfect’ expansion plan for a boutique firm. It was 64 pages of demographic data, heat maps, and competitive analysis. I had accounted for everything, or so I thought. But I hadn’t accounted for the fact that the lead architect on the project would go on sabbatical 4 days before we broke ground, or that a local zoning law was about to change. I held onto that 64-page deck like a life raft, insisting we follow the ‘approved strategy.’ I was so busy looking at the map that I didn’t notice we were driving into a lake. We lost $234,000 in that first quarter simply because I was too arrogant to admit that my document was obsolete the moment it was finished. I was more committed to being ‘right’ according to the plan than being ‘effective’ according to reality.

Rio L. once described a fragrance that was technically perfect… It fails to account for the ‘pH’ of the organization-the office politics, the fatigue of the middle managers, the simple human tendency to revert to old habits when things get stressful. If your strategy requires people to act like robots, your strategy is actually just a fantasy novel with charts.

Direction vs. Fixed Rail

[Real strategy is a conversation that never ends.] We need to stop asking, ‘What does the plan say?’ and start asking, ‘What is the market telling us right now?’ This doesn’t mean we abandon direction. It means we stop treating the direction as a fixed rail and start treating it as a compass. A compass tells you where North is, but it doesn’t tell you about the fallen tree 14 feet in front of you. You have to use your eyes for that.

The obsession with the 50-page deck is a defense mechanism. It’s a way for executives to feel like they have minimized risk. If the plan fails, they can point to the $474,000 spent on research and say, ‘We did our due diligence.’ But true leadership is the willingness to be ‘wrong’ on paper so you can be ‘right’ in the moment.

The Illusion of Progress

My hiccups finally subsided around page 54, right as I was wrapping up. The silence that followed was heavy. I looked at the faces around the table and realized that most of them were already thinking about their 1:30 PM meetings. The deck was finished. The ‘strategy’ was done. We would all go back to our desks and do exactly what we were doing yesterday, regardless of what the 44-slide presentation suggested. That is the tragedy of the obsolete deck. It creates the illusion of progress while everything remains the same.

We need strategies that breathe. We need plans that are written in pencil but executed with conviction. We need to value the sensing over the archiving. Because in the time it took you to read these words, the world has already moved, and your 50-page deck is now further into the past.