Insights

Featured

Strategic breakdowns are behavioural, not informational

After every strategic failure, the same diagnosis arrives: the data was insufficient, the time was compressed, the mandate was unclear. The diagnosis is wrong. Strategic breakdown is behavioural, not informational, and that distinction changes what fixing it actually requires.

Angus Ess

July 2026

6 min read

In the World

The AI strategy problem

Organisations can now generate more strategic intelligence about AI than they can act on. The problem is not informational. It is a crystallisation failure, and every conventional response to it makes it worse.

Angus Ess

June 2026

7 min read

First Principles

Strategy is not planning

Every organisation calls its plan a strategy. The two words describe different cognitive operations applied to different conditions, and conflating them is why strategies so regularly fail to survive contact with the reality they were designed for.

Angus Ess

May 2026

5 min read

First Principles

Communication crystallises thinking

When players explained their reasoning aloud, their moves improved. That was the first observation. Communication doesn't follow strategy. For anything genuinely complex, it's part of how strategy takes shape.

Angus Ess

April 2026

8 min read

First Principles

Better decision-makers, not better decisions

The goal of most development programmes is better decisions. That is the wrong unit. What transfers across every problem a leader will face is not a better process for this one. It is judgment, and developing it requires different conditions entirely.

Angus Ess

March 2026

6 min read

From the Room

What the first move says

The opening sequence of a Go game is the clearest window into how someone reasons under uncertainty. Three patterns appear in the first five moves. What they reveal has nothing to do with Go.

Angus Ess

February 2026

6 min read

From the Room

The Third Game Mindset

We had scheduled one game. We played three. What shifted between the first and the third had almost nothing to do with Go.

Angus Ess

January 2026

6 min read

From the Room

The Team That Whispered

One team talked. The other whispered. What the whispers cost them had nothing to do with information.

Angus Ess

December 2025

6 min read

From the Room

What a Team Sounds Like Before It Fails to Decide

Facilitators don't just watch the board. They listen to the conversation around it. After enough sessions, you can hear a decision disappearing before the team knows it's gone.

Angus Ess

November 2025

6 min read

In the World

Why Leadership Development Doesn't Transfer

The global leadership training market is worth $34 billion. At most 30 percent of it transfers to workplace behaviour. The industry has known this for decades. The problem was never the content.

Angus Ess

October 2025

6 min read

From the Room

What Go reveals about decision-making under pressure

Go is often described as the most complex board game ever devised. But complexity is not what makes it useful as a practice environment. What matters is that every move changes the board, and consequences appear long after the decision.

Angus Ess

September 2025

7 min read

First Principles

The RCDC-Engine: a cycle for converting uncertainty into movement

The RCDC-Engine is not a checklist. It is a cognitive mechanism, a structured cycle that transforms uncertainty into action through reasoning, crystallising, deciding, and communicating. Understanding how it stalls is as important as understanding how it flows.

Angus Ess

August 2025

8 min read

First Principles

What a second-order strategic mindset actually means

A first-order thinker applies the framework. A second-order thinker can observe themselves applying the framework, in motion, under pressure, and adapt their posture in real time. The difference is not knowledge alone. It is metacognitive awareness.

Angus Ess

July 2025

9 min read

First Principles

Why Go?

Go is not a metaphor for strategy. It is a practice environment. That distinction is what makes it work, and why the metaphor always breaks down.

Angus Ess

June 2025

7 min read

Stay sharp

New thinking, when it's ready.

No cadence, no noise. New pieces arrive when they're worth reading.