Strategy Beyond Great Waves
The not-so-entirely-new (link, link) news that the DeepSeek team’s latest AI models — especially V3, R1, and R1-Zero — could be trained at orders of magnitude lower cost than comparable leading-edge models has deluged the business world over the past week. Headlines like “DeepSeek Prompts a Reckoning Across Wall Street and Silicon Valley” and “How China’s DeepSeek Outsmarted America” echo a familiar pattern: the breathless announcement or recognition of a technological breakthrough that will supposedly reshape competitive landscapes overnight.
We’ve seen this before and will see it again. The initial reaction to technological developments often follows a predictable arc: dramatic proclamations of industry upheaval, followed by urgent questions about strategic implications, eventually giving way to more nuanced understanding of the true impact. As AI developments continue without relent, many leaders find themselves asking: Which changes truly matter? What lies beneath the surface of these announcements? How do we distinguish between immediate ripples and fundamental shifts?
These questions find powerful expression in Katsushika Hokusai’s iconic woodblock print, “The Great Wave off Kanagawa.” One of the most recognizable works of Japanese art (if not all art), it depicts three fishing boats confronting an enormous wave, with Mount Fuji visible in the distance. The artwork’s enduring power lies not just in its dramatic composition, but in how it captures the layers through which we experience a changing world.
Personal Lessons from High Seas
Years ago, I experienced firsthand what it means to navigate powerful forces at sea as a crew member aboard the Lord Nelson, a 170-foot-long tall ship specially outfitted for mixed crews of able-bodied and disabled crew members. Shortly after departing from the Azores in the middle of the Atlantic ocean on a two-week voyage to the British Isles, we encountered brutal weather systems. During one evening shift, I found myself at the helm, navigating through 30-foot swells and winds gusting to over 70 mph. I remember my head being on a swivel, especially as we crested waves, constantly scanning where swells were coming from, how to position our suddenly small-seeming ship for them, and watching out for an errant wave.
Then, with a crack, the main topsail tore, followed by the forward top gallant. With key sails damaged, the ship became more difficult to control, and the flailing canvas threatened to further damage the rigging. Over the hours that followed, the ship and crew held firm. I remained at the helm beside the captain, focused on keeping the Lord Nelson steady as we worked methodically to secure the damaged sails and rigging.
Before I disembarked in England, I took a few minutes to sit down with the captain and his first mate to reflect on my observations and their experiences of that evening. Their reflections speak directly to how strategy executives can help their organizations navigate today’s waves of change:
First, de-bias your assumptions about how much you (or your ship) can handle. When a tall ship is losing sails in the middle of a storm and you’re struggling to keep it pointed in the right direction, it’s easy to think you’re in more serious trouble than you are.
For strategy executives, well-designed and mobilized strategies are much more resilient than one might think in the moment. Like a ship’s ballast, strategies crafted with clear choices, well-documented underlying assumptions, and effectively mobilized throughout an organization can weather significant turbulence. In particular, data shows that a capability that most distinguishes companies highly effective at designing and executing bold strategies is their ability to identify, understand, and align on the trends that matter most to their business. This is why it is essential that strategy executives hold a high bar for strategy.
Second, in times of crisis, the leader’s perspective is invaluable. The key to weathering complex crises is pointing skilled teams in the right direction, and helping them focus on the job at hand without worrying about watching for changes in how the wind whips around them. It means telling the helmsman where to point the ship, giving the crew time and space to deal with the damage, and keeping a watchful eye on what matters most.
Situations like these are why I like the term “strategy leadership,” which reflects how strategy executives (and strategic CEOs and other executives) use a deep understanding of the craft of strategy to lead its design, delivery, and adaptation. They help ensure teams and leaders understand when they need to stay the course, adjust, or wait and see, force the right kind of discussion and debate at the right time (I guarantee there was a lot of whiteboarding going at Nvidia this week), and deploy their strategy resources in ways that drill down to proprietary insight and don’t create unnecessary churn in the broader organisation.
Third, trust built on common language and concepts are key to high performance under pressure. According to the first mate, retention was particularly high on this ship because people quickly understood whether the culture was “for them.” The value proposition, why people were on the boat, was crystal clear. Commonly shared standards further smooth collaboration under pressure. As noted by the first mate, it’s the “nature of sailing” to have common skills — and on this ship, the shared values created the kind of trust that could endure a hurricane.
For strategy executives, as I explored in my recent piece on the meaning of strategy, common language and approaches to strategy are essential for great strategy outcomes. When teams share a clear understanding of what strategy means, how strategic decisions are made, and what constitutes meaningful strategic moves, they can adapt more effectively to changing conditions. Like a crew that knows their roles and shared protocols, teams with strong strategic culture respond to shifting trends better than competitors.
The Layers of Waves
These maritime lessons help us better understand the forces at work in strategic change. Like Hokusai’s wave, strategic trends manifest in layers. At the surface is the spray and foam — what Hokusai renders as claw-like tendrils reaching from the wave’s crest. In strategic terms, this represents the immediate reactions: headlines, market movements, competitor announcements. Below this is the great wave itself — the immediate and tangible impacts that demand response. But most crucial is what Hokusai implies but doesn’t directly show: the deep ocean currents and seafloor topology that give rise to such waves — the fundamental forces of technological capability, economic structures, and human behavior that shape lasting strategic opportunities.
The Strategy Executive’s Toolkit
Not every organization has a senior strategy executive. But in turbulent environments, the role can be crucial. Their task mirrors the lessons from sailing through storms: helping organizations maintain perspective, direction, and cohesion in uncertain conditions.
First, be adept at identifying signals in the noise, just as a helmsman must distinguish between surface chop and deeper swells. This means looking beyond the froth, paying attention to the underlying forces driving the trend, seeking out diverse perspectives, and having team capacity dedicated to deep knowledge on the trends that matter. The research I run on the strategy executive’s evolving mandate demonstrates strategy functions need mandates that answer the question “what strategy activities and capabilities does my strategy need right now?” Too many strategy functions do everything related to strategy and yet nothing well, or are not evolved as their organization’s strategy and its needs evolves.
Second, re-anchor the executive team to the organization’s fundamental strategic principles, much like a captain keeping the crew focused on their heading rather than the surrounding storm. When faced with disruptive news and a potential trend shift, it’s easy to get swept up in reactive measures. Strategy executives are there to remind their peers of the fundamentals that sit beneath their strategy: core strategic goals and challenges, competitive advantage along their value chains, and the most important assumptions and beliefs underlying their strategy. Does the new information fundamentally challenge any of them? Which strategic choices and options are affected most? Does it shift any of them into new levels of risk or uncertainty? Do any of the trigger points for our strategic options change? Does it create new opportunities we can move on faster than competitors, thanks to insight only we have?
Third, build and reinforce the shared language that enable coordinated action under pressure. Like a well-trained crew that understands both their individual roles and collective purpose, organizations need common frameworks for understanding and responding to strategic change. This means establishing clear standards for what constitutes meaningful strategic moves, maintaining disciplined documentation of strategic assumptions, and creating regular forums for testing those assumptions against emerging reality.
Beyond these actions, strategy executives play another crucial role: injecting historical perspective into strategic dialogue. Hokusai’s “Great Wave” illustrates why this matters. While the print is dominated by turbulent waters, at its heart stands Mount Fuji. Though it may appear small amid the dramatic waves, its presence is essential — both literally and symbolically. In Hokusai’s full series of “Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji”, the mountain remains the constant reference point, seen from different angles and in different conditions, but always fundamentally unchanged.
Every industry has its own equivalents of Mount Fuji — fundamental forces and technology curves with dynamics that remain consistent even as surface conditions shift dramatically. Strategy executives must help their organizations maintain sight of enduring realities, even when dramatic waves command attention. Like Mount Fuji in Hokusai’s prints, these fundamentals provide the reference points that make navigation amidst uncertainty possible.
Some of the most impressive strategists I’ve worked with have been historians first and futurists second. They understand that historical analysis can be invaluable for understanding trends, as exemplified by Steven Sinofsky’s historically-informed analysis of DeepSeek. Any strategy executive can leverage history to steady and focus executive teams in the present, through their own knowledge, experts in their organisation, board members, and external advisors.
Leading Through Great Waves
DeepSeek’s news, like Hokusai’s great wave, commands immediate attention. But the most effective strategy executives know their value lies in seeing what others miss — the deeper currents of change, the enduring fundamentals that shape lasting advantage, and the bold moves that truly matter. By maintaining this perspective and a high bar for strategy’s design and mobilization, they help their organizations move beyond reactive responses to seize the real opportunities that lie beneath the surface. In times of dramatic change, this ability to see beyond the wave is essential for creating and sustaining competitive advantage.
