The elasticity of time Adaptive strategy depends upon more than responding quickly to change. It requires the ability to recognize the different forms of time operating within a situation, distinguish pace from timing, duration from delay and horizon from speed, preserve the continuities upon which meaningful change depends, and compose action across clocks that cannot and should not be made identical. Temporal capability names this practical achievement. Futures Literacy strengthens its...

Negative capability, strategic judgment and the gift of limits Strategy begins where reliable prediction ends. Perception may reveal several plausible stories; analysis may narrow them without settling what should be done. Strategic judgment is the discipline that carries an organization across that remaining distance. It distinguishes different forms of not knowing, tests the authority of expertise, concentrates attention on the challenge that matters, assigns ownership for the consequential...

The official history of The Sports Authority credits one man with a vision. That version is wrong, the tidy story we reach for because it is easier to tell than the truth. Its founding merchant, Roy Cohen, kept the real one, and it is the better lesson in how strategy actually emerges. The chain that became the first sporting goods retailer to pass a billion dollars in sales was built far less from a plan than from judgment. “to Roy, who knows the real story.” — inscribed on a closing dinner...