Strategy with Courage — A Different Way to Create Extraordinary Impact

Why Effective Strategy Matters.

Every organisation exists to create value or impact. Whether we serve communities, customers, or society more broadly, progress comes from making a real difference in people’s lives. Yet resources are always tight—time, energy, money, attention. We simply cannot afford to scatter our effort across too many priorities or dilute ourselves through activity that feels busy but doesn’t meaningfully shift the needle.

Effective strategy is how we choose what truly matters. It is how we direct scarce resources toward the few things that create the greatest value. At its best, strategy gives us purpose, focus, and courage. It helps us say this is where we are going and this is why it matters and then act with clarity instead of hesitation.

But this is increasingly difficult. The pace of change, the pressure for certainty, and the weight of expectations all make it tempting to fall back on familiar patterns: produce a polished document, plan every move in advance, or reassure ourselves with activity that looks credible but doesn’t challenge anything.

And that is exactly why we need a different approach—one that is braver, clearer, and rooted in deep thinking rather than surface-level planning.

Why We Get Strategy Wrong.

Most organisations don’t struggle because they lack commitment, or skill. They struggle because they fall into predictable traps that distort thinking and create strategy that is heavy but not effective.

We don’t make enough time for the thinking. True strategic thinking requires space, reflection, challenge, and imagination. Yet many teams are overwhelmed by delivery pressures. Thinking becomes a luxury squeezed between meetings. When thinking is rushed, clarity is lost.

We adopt fashionable concepts without considering fit. New frameworks, trends, and buzzwords come along every year. They often offer useful ideas—but when applied uncritically, they become noise. Organisations reshape language without reshaping decisions.

We rely on ‘common sense’ because it feels safer. Common sense can be helpful, but it often anchors us in yesterday’s logic. It pushes us toward the commonplace not distinctiveness.

We copy what others do. Imitation feels credible. It reduces risk. But strategy built on replication traps us within other people’s thinking.

We protect what we’ve already done. Strategies frequently become extensions of the past. We smooth the edges, keep what is familiar, and avoid confronting what isn’t working. We justify our past choices but limit future potential.

But we overlook the learning we already have. Our own experience, that of our teams, stakeholders and customers and their successes, failures, and frontline knowlkedge contain deep wisdom that too often remains untapped. By failing to really interrogate our experience we miss the signals and patterns within the resource most readily at our fingertips.

We leap into tactics without a clear direction. Teams often generate long lists of initiatives, projects, workstreams. But without a clear narrative—a compelling story that sets our direction—these actions drift. They compete for attention, energy, and resources. Movement happens, but progress doesn’t.

These traps are understandable. They arise from pressure, complexity, and good intentions. But they lead to strategies that are complicated on paper and unclear in practice. Strategies that feel safe but do not change much, that are lacking boldness. The courage to think differently, choose differently, and create the conditions for extraordinary impact.

What We Need to Do Differently.

A different kind of strategy is possible—one that is cleaner, sharper, and genuinely transformative. It doesn’t depend on a particular framework or method. It’s an approach, a way of thinking and acting.

A clear directional narrative. Our shared narrative is the story of where we are going and why. It defines the difference we want to make, the place we want to get to. It sets the compass: everything we do must moves us in that direction, or it does not belong.

Insights developed by thinking deeply and drawing on experience. Insight unlocks change. It comes from sitting with the hard questions. From noticing patterns and hearing the signals. From learning honestly from what has worked—and what has not. From resisting the temptation to rush to action before understanding the landscape more fully.

Ruthlessly interrogated assumptions. Every strategic choice rests on beliefs, claims, and predictions. Some are well founded; others are wishful thinking. Effective strategy requires the discipline to challenge these assumptions openly: Where might we be wrong? What don’t we know? What could derail this? Where are we being overly optimistic? Courage comes not from blind confidence, but from confronting reality with honesty.

Action that aligns with the narrative and insights. Actions should not be a long list of everything that seems useful. They should be a small number of moves towards the narrative, putting insights into practice. Coherence is more powerful than volume.

Stepping out bravely. We cannot plan our way to impact. At some point, we must step forward—thoughtfully, but decisively. Not in reckless leaps, but in courageous, informed movements into new territory. Strategy becomes real only when we act.

Learn the way to effectiveness. No insight is perfect. No assumption is fully accurate and our narrative may change. What matters is not perfection but adaptation. We learn, adjust, recalibrate, and keep moving toward the extraordinary impact we seek.

This approach is not about producing long documents. It is about cultivating clarity, courage, and disciplined learning. It is about creating a living strategy—one that breathes, adapts, and grows stronger through real-world experience.

How change happens.

Free-Range Strategy is built on a belief that extraordinary impact requires extraordinary clarity and courage.

When I look back on the work that I have found most meaningful — that seemed to really shift something — what made the difference was working in a closer way, cultivating a deep engagement.  Not arriving with answers, but staying long enough to think together, to challenge assumptions as they surfaced, to shape the narrative, to design action, observe and adjust. Walking alongside teams as they tried things, got stuck, changed their minds, lost clarity, found it again. Learning our way forward together.

That way of working asked for more — more trust, more patience, more courage, more willingness to sit with uncertainty. But it also seemed to be what allowed the genuinely new to emerge. So, when I set up Free-Range Strategy it was not as a model or a method but as a way of creating the necessary condition for change that actually changes something.