Flexible, Fluid, Functional & Futuristic Leadership in Action
In modern organisations, ‘strategy’ is too often relegated to a noun, a document, a plan, a PowerPoint deck. But real strategy is a posture; a behavioural stance that leaders and teams assume in the face of growing or running a business, uncertainty, change, and competition. It is not what you say in meetings. It is what your teams do when the situation shifts, when trade-offs arise, and when performance must be created under evolving constraints.
This article builds on a few foundational perspectives outlined in my earlier works. One is, ‘Strategy is a Behaviour, not a document,’ where I introduced the OCSM model: Observe, Choose, Shape, Manoeuvre; as a behavioural approach to understanding and applying strategy in real-world contexts. The second ‘Change Leadership: Science and Art for Strategic, Cultural and Leadership Excellence’ outlined the deeper qualities of effective change-makers and strategic leaders. This is where I had revealed the 4F approach of Change Leaders, who come way ahead of the traditional change management approaches.
The Four Postures of Strategic Behaviour
The OCSM is Strategy expressed / figured-out / lived through interconnected postures:
1. Observe: Strategic insight begins with awareness. This is not just market research or customer feedback. It is pattern recognition, contextual sensing, and meaning-making. Strategic organisations train their people to see around corners of time, competition and customers. E.g. Steve Job’s and now Apple’s focus on iPhones.
2. Choose: Strategy requires choice and every choice implies a trade-off. Choosing where to focus and where not to is the essence of strategic clarity. It is not about saying yes to everything but about having the courage to say no to something lucrative all competitors are going after. E.g. Samsung’s focus on displays, while everyone was literally just aggregating electronic components.
3. Shape: Choices must be enabled. This means designing systems, structures, incentives, and processes that align with strategic intent. Without shaping, strategy remains aspirational. E.g. Amazon’s focus on Cloud Infra and Robotics companies, despite being a retail giant.
4. Manoeuvre: In a dynamic environment, strategy must be enacted with agility. Manoeuvring is the capacity to adapt while remaining anchored in intent. It is not about reacting; it is about navigating. E.g. NVIDIA’s focus on AI chips.
The 4F’s of Change Leadership: A Strategic Leadership Lens
Briefly exploring the four behavioural qualities that must be displayed/practised/personified by every strategic leader:
- Flexible Approach – Adaptive and explorative in structure, thinking, and approach. Unafraid to bend where rigidity would break the system.
- Fluid Approach – Comfortable with ambiguity and change, while translating Flexible Thinking and Exploration into real world action. Able to flow between contexts, roles, and demands.
- Functional Approach – Outcome and impact oriented, executional and excellence oriented ways of being. Relentlessly focused on delivering what actually works, yet attuned to what the future is possibly stirring-up.
- Futuristic Approach – Oriented toward the long arc, while firmly being in control of the reality. Builds for tomorrow, not just today.
Building upon these foundations, this article explores how strategy becomes transformative when we refine the OCSM model postures: Observe, Choose, Shape, Manoeuvre, with the 4F approach of Change Leadership: Flexible, Fluid, Functional, Futuristic.
These two behavioural frames converge to create a robust, adaptable, and strategic posture for leadership.
A quick summary
Observe, Choose, Shape, Manoeuvre, are important postures, for a leader and a business to find a path that is strategic in real terms, and not just as a marketing stunt. Now, each of these OCSM posture: give brilliant impetus to the organisation when all 4F characteristics are present in that stage of the posture. They create strategy not just as a statement, but as a lived, evolving, high-impact experience, as explained below.
1. Observe: strategic awareness in motion – 4F Sensing
Observation is the starting point of all strategic behaviour. But observation without 4F posture becomes reporting. Observation is the posture of awareness. It is how leaders gather signals, listen to the world around, to systems, to data and sense the movement of trends before they become obvious.
- Flexible leaders observe across boundaries. They adjust their lens, challenge their biases, and remain open to diverse data. They flex their attention across trends, sentiments, and systems to expand the aperture of what is relevant. They look beyond function and domain. For example, a retail leader studies healthcare to anticipate digitisation curves.
- Fluid observation means allowing patterns to emerge without rushing to judgement. It requires mental flow, not rigid frameworks. They shift between micro and macro perspectives, noticing both cultural signals in the organisation and macroeconomic shifts or the world qualified in a socio-economic reality of the target population. E.g. a brand realising the cues for not launching certain products in certain markets.
- Functional observation is purposeful. It’s not curiosity for its own sake. It is aligned to organisational priorities and relevance. Not everything observed is relevant. Strategy-focused leaders filter noise from signal, focusing on what creates leverage. E.g. a leader watching the market to finalise a build vs buy vs borrow strategy.
- Futuristic observation goes beyond what is visible. It tunes into weak signals and evolving archetypes. It helps leaders see not just what is happening, but what is becoming. They look not only at what is, but what could be. This means watching adjacent industries, upcoming policy changes, or youth sentiment as cues for tomorrow. E.g. a business group sponsoring a range of inter-disciplinary studies.
Satya Nadella’s early tenure at Microsoft saw him listening deeply across teams, customers, and markets. His observational posture was flexible and future-facing, allowing him to sense a shift from device-centric thinking to cloud and platform ecosystems.
Strategic Question:
What am I seeing now that others will see six months later?
2. Choose: strategic judgement with intent – 4F Decision-Making
Choosing is where strategy takes form. It is not merely about having options, but about owning the consequences of focus. Choice is the posture of decisiveness, not mere selection. It is the art of intentional trade-offs, while sticking to a value-based intent. It is where strategy takes shape, and what makes something strategic, either live or die.
l Flexible leaders navigate conflicting possibilities. They revisit and reshape assumptions, rather than anchoring too early. Leaders consider multiple pathways before locking in. They can unstick themselves from habitual decisions. E.g an industry laggard switching gears to focus on quality of revenue despite pressure from investors, since they know brand equity is growing faster than all competitors.
- Fluid decision-makers work with ambiguity. They maintain direction while adapting to dynamic information. They make decisions dynamically, not waiting for ‘perfect clarity’ but refining choices with real-time learning. E.g. an industry newbie entering a space only giants take-on.
- Functional choices reflect coherence. They are not reactive or scattered. They serve the larger design of value creation. Every choice has a cost. Leaders committed to strategy think through implementation – how real people will act on the trade-offs. E.g. continuity of a year-on-year strategy that’s giving slow but deep growth.
- Futuristic choice means selecting with long horizons in mind. It considers system-wide implications over time. Strategic decisions don’t optimise just for this quarter. They seed advantages for the future. E.g. a substantial financial commitment to R&D despite a high industrywide failure rate.
Example: When Tata Group unified multiple digital assets under Tata Neu, it made a functional and futuristic choice – to compete through integration, not fragmentation. The decision required flexibility amidst internal complexity and fluidity in ecosystem design.
Strategic Question:
What are we willing to lose today to gain tomorrow?
3. Shape: strategic enablement and systems design – 4F Structuring
Shaping is the often-neglected backbone of strategic action. It is about building the scaffolding for the choice to work. Shaping is the posture of enablement. It means designing structures, processes, and environments that make the chosen strategy possible.
- Flexible shaping means adjusting roles, rituals, and resources to fit emergent needs, not legacy forms. Instead of standardising everything, strategic leaders tailor systems to match emerging needs. E.g. A high-growth team may need bespoke OKRs, not legacy KPIs.
- Fluid shaping involves enabling collaboration across silos. It brings multiple functions into co-creation. They iterate. Pilots, prototypes, testbeds, all help the organisation learn its way forward. E.g. Consultant led internal cross-functional teams delivering a capex project.
- Functional shaping anchors systems to strategic priorities. It ensures processes serve the direction, not distract from it. Strategy is only as good as its delivery system. E.g. Leaders reshape manufacturing processes, rewards, and governance to reinforce the new direction of export markets.
- Futuristic shaping builds institutions that remain relevant. It avoids patchwork and invests in foundational change. They don’t build systems just for the current phase. They design with scalability, sustainability, and stewardship in mind. E.g. Building a futuristic product with a bolt-on strategy that other organisations are working on.
Example: Adobe’s shift to SaaS wasn’t just a business model decision; it involved shaping new pricing logics, customer success models, and engineering mindsets. It reflected all four 4F elements in real-time restructuring.
Strategic Question:
What are the systemic enablers or blockers of our direction?
4. Manoeuvre: strategic agility and navigation – 4F Action
Manoeuvring is about moving through the market, the system, and the opportunity landscape with agility and alignment. Manoeuvring is the posture of movement. It is how leaders respond, reorient, and adapt – not reactively, but with presence and clarity.
- Flexible manoeuvres allow pivoting without panic. They respond to shifting ground while holding steady at the core. Leaders drop sunk costs and pivot, when necessary, without ego, but with resolve. E.g. A food brand growing with new launches through and despite COVID.
- Fluid action ensures continuity even amidst redirection. It maintains energy and cohesion. They stay calm in the churn. They don’t freeze in the fog. Instead, they learn by moving. E.g. Organisational Turn-around stories.
- Functional manoeuvres serve the value path. They don’t scatter focus; they sharpen impact. Movement is purposeful. Strategic leaders don’t ‘change for change’s sake’, they adapt with outcomes in mind. E.g. A leading Indian Telecom in the face of competition.
- Futuristic manoeuvring positions the organisation to shape markets, not just chase them. They manoeuvre not just to escape today’s problems, but to position the enterprise for long-term resilience. E.g. a premium electronics player entering chip manufacturing.
Example: Netflix’s successive transitions – DVDs to streaming, then to content production – were enabled by flexible investments, fluid org design, functional storytelling, and a futuristic grasp of audience evolution.
Strategic Question:
When things shift, how do we shift with grace and grit?
A Living Leadership Model
Let’s bring this together. Strategic leaders don’t merely run strategic projects. They embody strategic postures. And these postures become powerful only when expressed through the behavioural signature of the 4Fs.
When Strategy Fails, It’s Often Posture That Fails
Strategic failure is rarely due to bad intentions. More often, it’s the breakdown of posture.
- Observation without flexibility = Tunnel vision
- Choice without functionality = Misalignment
- Shaping without futurism = Expensive irrelevance
- Manoeuvring without fluidity = Operational whiplash
Such approaches lead to further failures of posture. When strategy breaks down, its roots are in:
- Rigid Observation: Teams keep tracking the same metrics long after the market has shifted.
- Inflexible Choice: Leaders stick to decisions made in the past because ‘we’ve already committed.’
- Mechanical Shaping: New strategies are overlaid on old systems without structural change.
- Frozen Manoeuvring: Teams wait for permission in times of disruption instead of acting with intent.
These are not failures of planning. They are failures of posture i.e. strategic positioning.
Example: WeWork’s rapid expansion reflected bold manoeuvring, but without functional coherence or futuristic grounding. Observation was narrow, choices were inflated, shaping was inadequate, and manoeuvres were erratic.
Strategic Posture Is a Culture
Strategy rises and prevails not through documents, but through behaviours that are inherent to an organisation’s culture. When leaders model Flexible, Fluid, Functional, and Futuristic mindsets through their common place strategic posture, teams follow.
- Meetings change: Questions become sharper. Trade-offs are named.
- Reviews shift: Not just ‘what did you do?’ but ‘what changed and how did you respond?’
- Learning loops build: Strategy becomes adaptive, not fixed.
From Strategy-as-Plan to Strategy-as-Posture
We’ve inherited decades of management orthodoxy that treats strategy as a planning function. But in dynamic systems, complexity rules. The future is not planned – it is navigated.
Strategy is not a document. Strategy is not just a direction. It is a way of seeing, deciding, enabling, and moving. In this landscape, we must replace static strategy documents with dynamic strategic posture. Strategy is posture. This posture is not a concept. The posture is best described by the OCSM model, and best expressed through the 4Fs of change leadership. The OCSM model tells us where to act. The 4F model tells us how to be. Together, they form a behavioural operating system for growing or running organisations, leading change, driving value, and sustaining relevance.
- Observe with openness.
- Choose with conviction.
- Shape with intent.
- Manoeuvre with grace.
Do it all flexibly, fluidly, functionally, and futuristically.
True strategic leadership is not about having a plan. It is about having the right posture in each phase of the work, and when posture becomes natural, strategy becomes culture.
References
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- Chandran, S.K. (2021). Are You Balancing ‘Built by the Organization’ and ‘Organization Building’? The HRM Nepal, Mangshir 2078
- Chandran, S.K. (2022). High Performing Teams – A Key to Strategic Success. The HRM Nepal, Shrawan 2079
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- Chandran, S.K. (2021). Change Leadership – Science and Art for Strategic, Cultural and Leadership Excellence. The HRM Nepal, Mangsir 2078
- Dixit, A., & Nalebuff, B. (1991). Thinking Strategically: The Competitive Edge in Business, Politics, and Everyday Life. W.W. Norton & Company
- Unilever Frontline Sensing System
Source: The Economist (2012), Harvard Business School Case Study (2013) - Spotify’s “Bets Board”
Source: First Round Review (2019), Company Engineering Blog - Haier’s Rendanheyi Microenterprise System
Source: Hamel & Zanini (2020), Humanocracy; HBR (2018) - IBM Watson Health Failure
Source: Stat News, Forbes, Wall Street Journal (2021–22) - Zara / Inditex Operating Model
Source: Harvard Business Review Case Studies, INSEAD Retail Strategy Analysis (2020) - Twitter Post-Musk (2022–23)
Source: New York Times, Bloomberg, The Verge (2022–2023 Analysis) - Samsung’s Trend Labs
Source: HBR (2008), “How Samsung Became a Design Powerhouse” by Verganti & Lee - Adobe Creative Cloud Pivot
Source: Adobe Inc. Annual Reports (2012–2015); Forbes (2016). “How Adobe Transitioned to SaaS” - Netflix Culture Deck
Source: McCord, P. (2014). “How Netflix Reinvented HR”, HBR - Shopify Logistics Exit (2023)
Source: The Verge, TechCrunch (May 2023). “Shopify sells its logistics business to Flexport” - OpenAI Strategic Agility (2022–2024)
Source: The Atlantic (2023), MIT Tech Review, NY Times, Sam Altman Blog - Apple’s Strategic Manoeuvres in Privacy and AI
Source: Financial Times (2023–24), Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Intelligence - Toyota’s Choice to Slow EV Transition (Post-2022)
Source: Reuters, Harvard Business School, Nikkei Asia (2022–23) - Microsoft’s Integration of AI and Productivity Stack
Source: The Verge, Microsoft Inspire 2023, Wired, Satya Nadella Keynotes
[Sai Kumar Chandran is the founder of OrbitShift. He is a coaching and consulting practitioner and an entrepreneur at heart. He can be reached at saikumarchandran@orbitshift.com.]
