The Lost Art of Quiet Wonder

A call for strategic leaders to rebel…softly and curiously!

The Madness of the Modern Day

Strategy today is suffocating in its own noise.

Slide decks buzz around like delivery drones. Diaries fill with meetings to prepare for meetings. Teams messages ping while we’re still in the call. Leaders grapple with a gnawing sense of missing a piece of the puzzle and always playing catch-up.

And yet… for all the busyness, so little business progress. Decisions stall. Confidence thins. Everything feels urgent. Effort skyrockets. Information overload. Circle repeats.

We know we need strategy over tactics, clarity over confusion, boldness over faffery. But the conditions we create…or tolerate!…make those things impossible. We’ve lost something essential. Not capability. Not intelligence. Not intent.

We’ve lost the quiet space where real strategic thinking begins.

What Is Quiet Wonder?

Quiet Wonder isn’t a luxury. It’s not some sort of meditation repackaged for the boardroom. It’s a serious strategic act.

It’s the courage to carve out space to think. Properly. Not in the five minutes between meetings. Not on a train overhearing a teenager’s TikTok feed.  And, although some people say they work well this way, I counter not in a brainstorming workshop!

This is about real, undisturbed, perhaps uncomfortable thought.

It’s where we ask the deeper questions ourselves then build the confidence and structure to ask them in the rooms that matter. The ones that children would ask - or aliens, or first-day employees. “Why do we even do this?” “What problem are we really solving?” “What would happen if we stopped?”

It’s not loud. It’s not performative. But it’s powerful. And rare.

Why We Lost It

The world got faster and more connected. Same-day deliveries, instant payments, Teams (or Slack or WhatsApp) interrupting at any time of the day or night. Start-ups that turn industries on their heads within a few years. The constant noise and rush drowns out the time for quiet wonder. The need to appear to outcompete fast-moving peers demands “quick wins” that seldom compound.

Technology got smarter. AI (and Google before it) gave us instant answers and a dangerous illusion of knowledge. A team of analysts and few months is no longer required to produce a 100 page strategy deck.

Leaders got more mobile and busier. They move between organisations repeating the same things that worked before because they’ve been hired to provide that experience and people expect them to have the answers. They lack the time and confidence to step back, say ‘I don’t know’ and fully face into how much the world has changed.

CEOs, execs, and strategy leads - the ones we rely on for direction setting - have become trapped in a culture of response, not reflection. The system rewards motion over meaning.

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The Strategic Cost of Losing It

When you lose quiet wonder, strategy gets noisy and pointless.

You get:

• Pet projects no one believes in, but no one dares kill
• Ten different meetings (of course with slides) to flush out views before an ExCo
• Leaders who think saying they don’t know the answer is a weakness
• Teams drowning in deliverables, starving for purpose
• And a business that looks busy… right up until it’s bought over!

I’ve seen this in motion: exco teams racing into product launches, acquisitions, rebrands, all while avoiding the harder question of “What are we actually here to do?”

The results? Frustrated boards. Bloated decks. Directionless action.

Everyone’s exhausted. No one’s clear. And that little start up that you convinced yourself wouldn’t have a chance just stole your market.

Spotting the Symptoms Of Quiet Wonder Leaving the Building

Let’s be honest. You don’t need a diagnostic. You know when it’s gone. But just in case, here are a few tells:

• Someone asks “What’s your strategy?” and you email them three 40-slide decks.
• You write a slide deck for your 1:1 so you can align ahead of the ExCo meeting, which needs a different slide deck, and you’ve gone back to a pack you used two years ago to provide the basis of the slide.
• You’re overwhelmingly busy (back to back meetings)… and quietly miserable (unless you’re both hugely extroverted and incurably work-shy!).
• You’ve launched into deck production before agreeing what story you’re telling.
• You’re expected to show “draft results” before anyone’s agreed on the question.
• The business treats strategy planning as a summary of what it already knows, made to look neat and pretty.
• You ask AI for a strategy or some research and take its answer at face value.

A culture that’s forgotten how to think differently…Or refuses to admit that it needs to.

Reclaiming Quiet Wonder as a Strategic Act

Let’s not accept a retreat. A rebellion is needed.

Choose quiet wonder. Choose:

• Thinking time over meeting time
• Open - and, dare I say, uninformed - debate
• Saying no to “let’s add a slide”
• Asking the “stupid” and “basic” questions
• Giving your HUMAN brain a workout, not perfecting your AI prompts

It’s not easy. It means fewer people-pleasing moments. Slower starts. Awkward “No”s to senior stakeholders.

But it’s the only way to get to the clarity that strategy actually needs. To the insight that no AI model will feed you unless you prompt it with deep imagination first.

The Payoff Is Strategy That Actually Works

Quiet wonder gets results.

It’s the foundation of:

• Long-term focus
• Braver decisions
• Competitive distinctiveness
• Calm in chaos
• Confidence in uncertainty

It’s how you can embrace the “Open Heart Strategy” approach to its fullest extent.

The Gentle Rebellion

So, I lay down a challenge for the week.

• Cancel one meeting that’s just a talking shop.
• Say no to one slide deck request when conversation will do.
• Carve out one hour just to think deeply and differently (ideally much, much more!)
• Don’t write a single piece of content without having a firm narrative.
• Ask one brave, naïve, essential question about your strategy.
• (The kind of question that feels embarrassing, awkward, and that you’d normally ignore to avoid looking stupid.)

Because in a world thrumbing with noise, quiet is radical.

And in a world obsessed with instant answers, wonder is where the real insights live.