We like to believe strategy is something we adjust as we go.
The market shifts, a competitor moves, and we update the plan. Agile. Responsive. Smart.
But the teams that win Le Mans didn’t write their strategy during the race. They wrote it before, including what they’d do at hour 14 when a stint goes badly, and panic starts whispering, “change something.”
Jim Collins found the same pattern in companies built to last. The ones that endured decades weren’t the fastest to pivot. They held a core ideology that didn’t bend, and a goal big enough that quarterly noise couldn’t talk them out of it.
We confuse relentless with stubborn, but they’re not the same. Stubborn refuses to learn. Relentless has already decided what it would never abandon, and learns everything else.
The bad stretch always comes. Hour 14 always arrives.
The question isn’t whether pressure will hit. It’s whether the strategy was solid enough going in that pressure doesn’t get a vote.
What part of your plan have you already decided is non-negotiable, before the pressure arrives to test it?
