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Strategic Drift

Drift is the systemic dissonance of gradual deviation. The strategy made sense when it was written, but small compromises compound over months. Context is lost as people leave. New priorities layer on top of old ones. A strategy can fall short of its expected value not because it was wrong, but because execution drifted away from it.

Drift is particularly dangerous because it is slow. No single decision causes it. No single person is responsible. It emerges from hundreds of reasonable micro-compromises — 'just this once,' 'we will revisit next quarter,' 'this is close enough.' By the time someone notices, the gap between plan and reality is structural.

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