Ironically, when managers think they have all the answers, strategy can turn into fantasy. Many organizations have an obsession with certainty, a must-know attitude to strategic initiatives. Senior managers often demand teams put forward plans that give the feeling everyone knows exactly how an idea is going to turn out. Stating that you don’t know can put senior managers or executives on their back feet, leaving them vulnerable at best. As one senior manager once told me, “Uncertainty is considered failure here.”

Companies, therefore, often end up dedicating more energy toward maintaining the illusion of pursuing a strategic aspiration than actually trying to make a strategic aspiration real. Failing to deliver can be a safer place to operate from than dealing honestly with why the company is not delivering.

This “uncertainty is considered failure” mindset has for the most part disappeared in the start-up community. Start-ups are much more likely to look at a strategic aspiration as a hypothesis to be tested instead of something to be planned and implemented.

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