the world is crying out for more strategic slowness

This week I have the unique opportunity of being shown around Puglia, Italy by my friend Benedetto Conversano. I first met Benedetto as a client of Gartner. He has been CIO at many large companies, and is just finishing his book "The Braveheart CIO", a powerful read, to be published this summer. Every day here is peppered with fascinating conversations, beautiful views and beautiful food. One of the thoughts this week has brought me is that the current context for business, including the scary risks, e.g from cyber, geopolitics and disinformation and the exciting opportunities, e.g from agentic ai, has created insane levels of rushing to do more. Enterprise FOMO. I get all the pressure, but I can't help but feel we need to quiet down the noise, pick the few most impactful things to do, and proudly and explicitly shun the others. Articulate our anti-strategy. where we won't play. How we won't win. Things we don't need to be on the leading edge of. Things we can be just good enough at. At the same time agressively pursuing simplification of what we've already got. Reward ideas to reduce, simplify, do less. Run subtractathons. Let's all strive to inject some strategic slowness in our enterprise’s strategies, plans and operations where possible. As well as creating more focus, and more targeted innovation, it will reduce cognitive load and stress on employees. #unthink #unlearn #unask #ai #strategy #innovation.