Guy Reams (00:01.23)
This is day 72, do not outsource strategy to journalists. I was sitting in my office last Tuesday when another email arrived. Subject line carried the familiar urgency, we need to talk about this. Attached was an article, something about a new framework, a shift in the market, a competitor making moves. The sender had read it that morning, by noon it was in my inbox with a note suggesting we pivot immediately.
I've seen this pattern repeat itself hundreds of times. Someone encounters an article in their feed. The timing feels uncanny. The topic aligns perfectly with a project they are working on right now. The alignment creates a sense of significance. This must mean something. This must be acted upon. So they forward it. They write urgent notes. They schedule meetings. They behave as if the entire organization has been waiting in suspended animation.
for precisely this signal to arrive and unlock the forward motion. I've been guilty of this myself more times than I care to admit. I have forwarded articles with breathless commentary. I've suggested we need to respond immediately. I felt that electric charge of relevance and mistaken it for insight. It took me years to understand what was actually happening in these moments. Humans are wired to overweight things that are recent, loud, and emotionally charged.
This is not a flaw, it's an evolutionary feature. Our ancestors survived because they paid attention to the rustling in the grass, the sudden movement at the edge of vision, the raised voices in the camp. Immediate threats demanded immediate action. The problem is that modern information systems have hijacked this ancient wiring and turned it into a weapon against clear thinking. News and social media are designed to trigger exactly this response. Articles are framed as trending.
urgent, existential. They are repeated across platforms until the repetition itself becomes evidence of importance. Our brains interpret frequency as significance. If we encounter the same idea three times in a week, we assume it must matter. Psychologists call this the availability heuristic. If something is easy to recall, if it is available in our minds, we judge it to be more important than it actually is. Then there is the fear.
Guy Reams (02:25.25)
The article suggests competitors are moving and implies that inaction carries risk. It whispers that we might fall behind, that we might miss the window, that someone will later ask why we did not respond when we had the chance. This fear is visceral. It bypasses rational analysis and goes straight to the gut. Doing something, anything, provides psychological relief. Forwarding the email feels like leadership. Calling a meeting feels like strategy. Action becomes a signal of competence.
even when the action itself is premature, misdirected, or outright wrong. The social pressure amplifies everything. Everyone is talking about this. Our competitors are capitalizing on it. People will wonder why we did not respond. Motion becomes confused with progress. Responsiveness becomes confused with leadership. The appearance of strategic thinking replaces the actual work of strategic thinking. I've learned to move slowly in response to new information.
People look at me sideways because of this. They interpret my caution as indecision. They mistake my patience for ignorance. They assume I have not seen the article, have not read the news, have not understood the urgency. But I have seen it. I have read it. I simply refuse to confuse information with action. Most information, especially the kind that arrives through news cycles and social feeds, is contextual, partial, and non-actionable in the short term. It provides background.
It offers perspective. It might signal a trend worth monitoring, but it rarely, almost never demands immediate action. A software firm cannot operate on reactive cycles. The cost is too high. The disruption too severe. The outcomes too poor. Ignore this at your peril. People believe that acting on new news demonstrates agility. They think it shows they are proactive, competitive, innovative. They imagine that they are being strategic.
The cold truth is that they are outsourcing their strategic thinking to journalists whose incentive is clicks, not outcomes. Journalists are not building products. They are not managing teams. They are not responsible for the long-term health of your organization. Their job is to capture attention. Your job is to build something that lasts. Reacting quickly may win praise. It may feel decisive. It may generate the appearance of momentum.
Guy Reams (04:50.242)
But the reality is that all great products are built on the foundation of boring, long-term planning. The kind of planning that is quiet, slow, and requires saying no constantly. The kind of planning that does not make for exciting emails or urgent meetings. The kind of planning that actually works. People consistently underestimate what real change requires. Even in fast, agile, nimble organizations, meaningful change takes weeks or months, not
the few days of a new cycle. By the time you mobilize resources, shift priorities, and begin execution, the context has already shifted. The urgent issue that demanded immediate action has decayed. The trend that seemed existential has now faded. The competitor move that looked threatening has proven irrelevant. You are left holding a half-executed pivot that no one remembers why you even started. The deeper problem is that this behavior trains people to stop thinking critically.
When every article becomes a call to action, when every trend becomes a mandate, when every competitor move becomes a crisis, people stop evaluating. They stop pushing back. They stop owning outcomes. They become order-takers. They wait for the next signal from the feed to tell them what to do next. This is not a team. This is a reactive system that has mistaken motion for progress. I want builders, not order-takers. Builders have a center of gravity.
They know what they are trying to accomplish. They have a vision that extends beyond the current news cycle. They can evaluate new information against that vision and decide whether it changes anything. Most of the time it does not. Most of the time the right response is to acknowledge the information, file it appropriately, and return to the work that actually matters. This behavior is not stupidity. It is human nature amplified by modern information systems. The real skill is not reacting faster.
The real skill is deciding slower but committing harder. This requires discipline. It requires confidence. It requires the ability to withstand the social pressure and the appearance of inaction. It requires trusting that work you are already doing is more important than the work someone else thinks you should be doing based on an article they read this morning. I've developed a system to manage this. I separate incoming information into three buckets, information, signals, and commitments.
Guy Reams (07:14.412)
Most things belong in the information bucket. These are items that are interesting, contextual, worth monitoring. They provide background. They help me understand the landscape, but they do not demand action. I file them. I revisit them occasionally. I watch to see if they develop into something more. Some things move into the signal bucket. These are patterns I see repeated over time, multiple sources, multiple context, sustained attention over weeks or months.
These are likely to become future things we might develop for. They deserve more attention. They warrant deeper analysis. They might eventually justify a commitment, but not yet. Not until the pattern is clear and the direction is certain. Very few things make it to the commitment bucket. These are the items I see as truly worthwhile, the kind of work that takes months of effort to accomplish, the kind of work that requires focus, resources, and sustained attention.
the kind of work that cannot be interrupted by the next trending article without serious cost. News almost never makes it to this bucket. Trends rarely do. Competitor moves occasionally, but only after careful evaluation and only when they are generally threatened or enhance our strategic position. This system protects me from the tyranny of the trending. It allows me to acknowledge the new information without being controlled by it. It gives me permission to move slowly, think carefully, and commit deeply.
It separates the signal from the noise. It keeps me focused on building rather than reacting. I've competed against the flavor of the day mentality most of my life. I've watched competitors chase every trend, pivot with every article, react to every competitor move. Some of them succeed for a while. They generate excitement. They capture attention. They look innovative. But over time, over years, the pattern becomes clearer. They are exhausted. Their teams are burned out. Their products are fragmented.
Their strategy is incoherent. They've mistaken motion for progress and paid the price. The organizations that endure, that build products people actually want, that create lasting value, are the ones that move slowly and commit deeply. They ignore most of the noise. They focus on a small number of important things. They say no constantly. They resist the pressure to react. They trust their vision more than they trust the news cycle. They build rather than respond.
Guy Reams (09:35.064)
This is not easy. It requires courage. It requires the ability to withstand criticism. It requires confidence in your own judgment. It requires the discipline to separate information from action, but it works. It has always worked. It will continue to work long after the current trending topic has faded into irrelevance. So when the next urgent email arrives, when the next article demands immediate action, when the next trend threatens to derail your focus, pause. Ask yourself which bucket this belongs in. Is this information, signal, or commitment?
Most of the time, it's just information. File it, monitor it, return to the work that actually matters. Save your commitments for things that truly deserve them. Build rather than react. Decide slower, but commit harder. That is the real skill. That is the real work. And that is how you win.