Why Smart Leaders Don’t Always React

When a competitor makes a bold strategic move, the pressure to respond can feel overwhelming. Conventional wisdom suggests that speed wins, but is reacting always the right choice?

In this interview, Goce Andrevski, associate professor and Distinguished Research & Teaching Fellow of Strategy, explores the idea of strategic forbearance: the deliberate decision to hold back, even when a company has the ability to act. 

By avoiding knee-jerk reactions, organizations can stay focused on their own strategy and remain agile when new opportunities emerge. Andrevski highlights how Apple's decision to abandon its electric vehicle project allowed it to redirect its efforts toward artificial intelligence, demonstrating how restraint can create space for future growth.

Ultimately, strategic forbearance is about making better decisions under pressure. Instead of assuming every competitive move demands an immediate response, leaders are encouraged to gather information and carefully consider the costs of both action and inaction. The result is a more thoughtful approach to competition, one that values strategic clarity and long-term success over the instinct to react.

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Goce Andrevski 

00:05 What is strategic forbearance?

Strategic forbearance is a purposeful decision to not respond to a competitor's move. It is purposeful because the company has resources to respond. It is capable. And it is also aware that the move comes. It's just that it makes strategic sense to not respond.

00:32 When is not acting the right move?

Competition in business is not like military and sports, where if one party wins, the opponent must lose. In business competition there is a third party and more parties, like customers or other stakeholders, that will evaluate the products that you offer or services that you offer to the market.

In business, it is a positive sum competition that both opponents may be better off. So strategic forbearance is a signal to your rival that is attacking you to actually coexist, to cooperate. For example, strategic forbearance means that you choose purposefully to not commit resources at this time, and to not act quickly and act urgently with something.

In other words, you're not focused on short-term benefits, but you're more looking in broad outcomes or long-term outcomes of your company. So, it preserves resources. When you don't act, then you are more flexible to switch to another direction when opportunities come. 

For example, Apple has spent years and years of investments in developing electric cars, and recently they decided to not pursue it. That decision enabled them to switch to AI, which was up and coming and became the new technology – the new emergent technology – and it was more complementary to their core business. Strategic forbearance is helpful in order to keep your focus on your own strategy. Reacting to competitors' moves is not always consistent with your strategic trajectory. 

02:34 How does silence shape competition?

How do companies surprise their rivals? How do they create moves that are unexpected to competitors? They don't respond right away, and response was expected. Because when you expect something to happen, and all of a sudden you see silence, you start thinking about what happened. So, it creates uncertainty for you, and sets you up for a surprise because you don't know what to expect next.

03:06 What is your advice to leaders?

When you feel that you are either attacked by a competitor or you have a really big issue and problem, you automatically feel urgency to act. But not always is acting quickly, acting automatically, the best choice. Sometimes it's better just to be patient and to wait, understand the situation, collect new information if needed, and then act purposefully. Forbearance turns the attention toward the importance of being patient and being deliberate.

Now, whether you will act or will not act in a given situation will still depend on your analysis of the cost and benefits of action, and cost and benefits of inaction. I'm just trying to emphasize to leaders that you [should] always think whether to act or not act by taking into account that not acting can actually be good for your company.

Goce Andrevski leads the Queen's Executive Education program Strategic Thinking: Turning Complexity into Clarity.