May 23, 2025
In the opening pages of Strategy to Action, I share the ancient fable of mice devising a brilliant strategy: tie a bell around the cat’s neck so they can hear it coming. The idea was sound. The strategy? Elegant. But when asked who would bell the cat, silence followed.
It’s a parable about feasibility. About the beautiful but fragile distance between ideas and action.
Most strategies die here — not because they’re wrong, but because they’re impossible to implement. They ask someone to bell the cat without ever naming the risk, the skill, or the sacrifice involved. But then a reader asked me a question that stopped me in my tracks:
“What if our job is to bell the cat?” What if the strategy is to do the impossible?
And I realized — that changes everything.
When your job is to Bell the Cat
When you’re aiming for 10x customer value, launching a category-defining product, or making a bold strategic leap, your work isn’t simple or complicated, it’s complex. And in complex systems, traditional strategies break down. You can’t map your way to success. You need a compass.
That’s when we shift from strategic plans to strategic principles. You don’t just need vision. You need vigilance, presence, adaptability, and above all, strategic humility.
Belling the Cat requires a complexity strategy
Here’s what it looks like when your big hairy audacious goal (BHAG) requires taming complexity, not controlling it.
1. Anchor Yourself First
When you’re doing hard things, fear gets loud. Your lizard brain can’t tell the difference between a threat to your ego and a threat to your life. You need to reset your nervous system before making strategic moves.
Try this: Take a breath. Now imagine the most powerful version of your customer. What’s your highest aspiration for them? Let that ground you.
This isn’t fluff. It’s operational clarity in a fog of uncertainty.
2. Be Mindful, Not Mechanical
Mindfulness isn’t about zen. It’s about seeing clearly. It means noticing weak signals before they become fires. In complex environments, you don’t manage for outcomes — you manage for patterns and momentum.
Weick and Sutcliffe call this a preoccupation with failure: not in a negative sense, but a sacred attention to near-misses and unexpected turns. This helps you make strong responses to weak signals.
The best in the business don’t just have a plan. They feel when something’s off — and they act early.
3. Defer to Expertise, Not Experts
In complexity, no one has all the answers. Plans built at the top often fail at the frontlines. Why? Because those closest to the work are closest to the truth. Belling the cat isn’t a solo mission — it’s a shared endeavor.
Leadership here means making the ask, then getting out of the way.
Design your team and culture to listen downward. That’s how complexity gives you leverage instead of whiplash.
4. Use Simple Rules, Not Rigid Plans
In complexity, less is more. Forget detailed roadmaps. You need simple operating rules that enable action in the face of surprise:
These rules don’t predict the future — they prepare you for it.
The point isn't to avoid Belling the Cat — It’s to get better at it
When your job is to bell the cat, you don’t just need courage — you need a complexity-informed strategy:
Final thought: From impossible to doable
Belling the cat isn’t impossible. But it is hard. The real question isn’t can we do it. It’s What kind of system, culture, and mindset do we need to make it possible?
That’s where strategy meets action. Not in the elegance of the idea — but in the clarity of what you actually do next.
And that… is how you move from the idea of impact to the reality of it.
In all that we do, let us seek wisdom, discipline, courage & justice.
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