Ninety-seven percent of senior executives say strategic thinking is the single most important leadership behavior. Yet ninety-six percent admit they don't have time to do it. That's not a scheduling problem, Fabio. That's a thinking problem. Harvard's Michael Porter, the economist who redefined modern competitive strategy, identified the root cause decades ago: most leaders confuse activity with strategy. They plan. They react. They optimize. But they never actually think strategically. The word strategy itself carries a clue. It comes from the Greek strategos, meaning general of the army. A general doesn't fight on the ground. A general reads the entire battlefield. That distinction matters enormously, because most organizations are run by people fighting fires, not reading terrain. Tactical firefighting feels productive. It generates motion, meetings, deliverables. But motion is not direction. Reacting to every competitive threat, every quarterly miss, every customer complaint keeps you busy while your position erodes. This is where Porter's insight cuts deep. He argues that competitive advantage is never about being better. It's about being different. Better is a race. Everyone can invest more, hire more, grind harder. Better has no ceiling and no finish line. Different, by contrast, creates a position that rivals can't easily copy without abandoning their own. Think about what that means structurally: if your strategy looks identical to your competitor's, you don't have a strategy. You have a wish. The mechanism that makes differentiation real is trade-offs. Choosing what not to do. This is the part most leaders resist, because saying no feels like leaving value on the table. It isn't. Companies with clearly defined strategic trade-offs consistently outperform rivals precisely because they concentrate resources on a unique value proposition rather than diluting effort trying to serve everyone. A budget airline that adds business-class lounges stops being a budget airline. A luxury brand that chases volume stops being luxury. The trade-off is the strategy. Without it, you're just reacting to whoever shouts loudest. So how does a leader actually make this shift, Fabio? It starts with one deliberate move: stepping off the ground and onto the balcony. Not physically, but cognitively. Strategic thinking is not a planning exercise you schedule once a year. It's a perspective you train yourself to hold continuously, one that prioritizes systemic logic over short-term noise. Ask not what your next move is, but what system of moves creates a position no one else occupies. That question changes everything. Strategic thinking isn't about having a better five-year plan. It's about seeing the board differently than everyone else in the room, and then having the discipline to act only on what that view demands.