S2E2: The Language of Strategy

I sat in a boardroom listening to colleagues define strategy.

The answers surprised me.

The definitions described process—plans, roadmaps, frameworks, documents.

Our language has colonized our perception. The words we use to describe strategy have become a prison for strategic thinking itself.

This isn't just semantics.

When we name something "strategy," we summon an entire ecosystem of expectations—documents, meetings, Powerpoints, forecasts.

The word itself carries invisible cargo.

I've watched brilliant people become strategically blind the moment they enter the "strategy room."

What if strategy isn't a category of thinking but a quality of perception?

Just as doing reveals what thinking cannot imagine, naming something often conceals what it actually is.

The philosopher Wittgenstein warned that "the limits of my language mean the limits of my world."

Our strategic language has become these limits.

When we separate strategy from execution, we create artificial boundaries that reality doesn't recognize.

When we impose time horizons on strategic thinking, we fragment what is actually continuous.

The marketing team that abandoned the word "strategy" entirely could potentially see patterns that had been hiding in plain sight.

What if our strategic blindness begins not with our analysis but with our language?

But once we recognize how language constrains us, a deeper question emerges about the fundamental nature of strategic reality itself.

What if the essence of strategy isn't choosing a position, but reshaping the nature of the game?

To be continued in episode 3: The ontology of strategic games