Strategy, for all the sophistication we attach to it, tends to arrive too late. Not in its timeline, often it’s rushed, but in the deeper sense of timing. It shows up after the fact, after the drift has turned into decline or when the problem has turned into a panic. In my experience a lot of what is habitually referred to as strategy begins not as foresight but as reaction. Something fails or is about to fail. A threat appears, acute, chronic, emerging, imagined and the reflex kicks in: we need a strategy!

But we don’t start by asking what’s possible. We start by trying to stop the discomfort. There’s tension in the room, sometimes unspoken but always present. Strategy becomes the theatre in which we try to reduce uncertainty, not just for the business, but for ourselves. We are trying to feel better, not just think better. And so, we reach quickly for answers. We skip the deeper preparation. We want the plan before we’ve taken the time to properly see the terrain.

What I’ve come to believe and what ROADMENDER frames as The Groundwork Model, is that strategy does not begin with questions. Strategy begins with preparing the ground. It is the slow, almost annoyingly so, complex, sometimes frustrating work of making sense before making plans. 

This is not a rejection of existing strategic frameworks. Many are useful. But what I often observe in practice is how much energy, time and cost go into strategies that fall short, not because they’re flawed in theory, but because they’re rushed in spirit. They’re too quick to act, too uncomfortable with not knowing, and too confident that logic alone will carry the day. This ‘rushing act’ is what behavioural scientist Amos Tversky once captured in his urging us to value the time needed to understand what we face before we launch into frontal problem-solving action. Tversky said “you waste years by not being able to waste hours”.

But we don’t operate in a linear world. We operate in one shaped by complexity, a reality so vast and interconnected that no single tool, model, or logic can ever fully contain it. And that’s not a failure. That’s the truth we need to build from. The Groundwork Model starts from this recognition. Before we act, we must orient. Before we orient, we must perceive. And before we perceive, we must prepare ourselves, emotionally, cognitively, culturally to hold the tension that complexity demands of us.

That preparation includes accepting ambiguity, practically as well as intellectually. It also means building a rich picture of the terrain that include more than numbers and facts, but textures, histories, signals, contradictions. And, it includes creating space where real questions can emerge and avoid questions designed to validate our preferred answers and resisting the pressure to build ‘simple’ picture of complexity too early.

The Groundwork Model at its simplest level consists of three phases; preparing perception, nurturing orientation and only then engaging planning. What this model offers is a shift in where we place our strategic effort. It doesn’t deny the importance of planning or analysis. On contrary, it elevates that importance by giving it the correct context. It challenges the idea that strategy begins with “what to do”. Instead, it says: the real work is creating the conditions where something new and appropriate can emerge. Admittedly this is not a routine task in contemporary work culture but its relevance is critical.

This is slow work. It is often invisible. It rarely performs well in the boardroom. But it is what makes the difference between a strategy that simply manages anxiety, and one that genuinely reshapes direction.

Because whether we like it or not, strategy does not operate outside the forces of complexity. It’s shaped by them. So, the question is not how to master complexity, but how to work with it honestly. And the answer, I believe, starts with the ground we choose to stand on before we even begin.