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Every once in a while, a leader says something that takes an idea you have been circling for years and makes it suddenly simpler.
That happened to me recently when I was speaking with a group of executives, and Jason Marx, CEO of Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting, asked a question I have not been able to stop thinking about:
What became possible this week?
I loved the framing immediately.
For years, I have talked about changing the game, seeing around corners, challenging assumptions, and designing strategy for the future. But those ideas can sometimes feel big, abstract, or distant. Jason’s question brings the future into the present.
Not what might happen someday. Not what could change over the next decade. Not what we should put in a long-range planning deck.
What became possible this week?
That question does something powerful. It forces us to notice that the boundary between impossible and possible is moving all the time. A technology becomes cheaper. A customer behavior shifts. A competitor proves something can work. A tool that was clumsy last month becomes useful this month.
The future does not arrive all at once. It assembles in small pieces. And the companies that change the game are often the ones that first notice those pieces appear.
Decisions Verses Defaults
This connects directly to a piece I wrote recently, “When the Game Really Starts,” about the difference between a decision and a default.
In that piece, I argued that much of life and business runs on default. We renew vendors, repeat pricing models, protect old business lines, keep organizational charts intact, and continue strategic priorities long after the conditions that created them have changed.
Defaults are not inherently bad. They give us speed. They reduce cognitive load. They create efficiency.
The danger comes when we confuse a default with a decision.
A decision is alive. It was made in a particular context, with particular information, under particular assumptions. A default is what remains after the context changes but the behavior continues.
So the real strategic question is not simply, “Did we make the right decision?”
It is, “If we arrived here today, knowing what we know now, would we make that same decision again?”
Jason’s question sharpens that idea. Because when something new becomes possible, yesterday’s good decision can quietly become today’s outdated default.
So the leader’s job is to ask, “What are we still doing only because the alternative was not possible before?”
From Efficiency to Reinvention
In tax and accounting, for example, the work has long been built around precision, compliance, interpretation, workflow, and trust. Those things still matter. But the question has shifted.
It is no longer only: How do we help professionals complete the work faster?
It is now: What kind of work becomes possible when intelligence can be embedded directly into the workflow?
That is a different question. It moves us from efficiency to reinvention. It moves us from improving the current game to asking whether the game itself is changing.
The Future Is Coming
Consider Elon Musk’s approach to building. Whether one admires or critiques him, one pattern is clear: he does not build only for the market as it exists today. He builds for the market he believes is becoming possible.
Tesla did not begin with the mass-market electric vehicle. It started with a high-end car, used that to fund a more accessible car, then used that to prove demand for EV infrastructure (charging stations, power generation, more cars) that opened up a market and broader adoption. The first product was not the destination. It was a tool toward building a future that was not yet economically obvious.
Many companies evaluate a new idea based on whether it works under today’s constraints. Elon evaluates ideas based on whether those constraints are likely to change.
The answer does not have to be certain. It has to be plausible enough to build toward.
That is the strategic value of asking what became possible this week. It shifts the conversation from “Can we prove this works today?” to “What would we do differently if this trend continues?”
The Economics of “Might Be Possible”
This is also the logic behind the experience curve, popularized by Boston Consulting Group. The basic idea is that as cumulative production increases, companies learn. They improve processes. They reduce waste. Costs fall as experience accumulates.
That means an idea that looks too expensive, too niche, or too early today may become attractive once adoption rises, learning compounds, and costs decline.
The strategic question is not only, “Can we make money on this now?”
It is also, “If the world moves in this direction, what position do we want to occupy when the economics become obvious to everyone?”
By then, of course, it may be too late.
This is why “might be possible” is so powerful. It is not fantasy. It is disciplined imagination. It asks leaders to look at changes in technology, regulation, customer behavior, cost curves, talent, distribution, and data, then notice where the boundary of the possible is moving.
The Future Arrives as an Exception
The hard part is that the future rarely arrives as a fully formed business case.
It arrives first as an exception.
A strange customer request. A prototype. A new behavior at the edge of the market. A cost that used to be prohibitive but is suddenly falling. A capability that was unreliable last quarter but is improving every month.
At first, the organization says, “That is interesting, but it is not our business.”
Then it says, “That is interesting, but the economics do not work.”
Then it says, “That is interesting, but customers are not asking for it.”
And eventually, if the organization waits too long, it says, “How did someone else get there before us?”
The purpose of asking “what became possible this week” is to interrupt that pattern. It makes possibility a leadership discipline. It trains the organization to scan for weak signals, not just lagging indicators.
Three Questions Before You Move
Before moving toward a project that might hit in the future, leaders should ask three questions.
1. What constraint is weakening?
Every business model is shaped by constraints: cost, speed, trust, regulation, access, talent, computing power, customer willingness, distribution, coordination. When one of those constraints weakens, new strategic options appear.
If AI reduces the cost of expertise, if sensors reduce the cost of visibility, or if adoption reduces the cost of production, an idea that once seemed impractical may deserve a second look.
2. Would customer behavior change if this became easy?
Customers rarely ask for what they have learned not to expect. Defaults train customers just as they train companies.
So ask: if this friction disappeared, what would customers stop tolerating? What would they do more often? What would suddenly feel outdated?
3. What small move would give us learning advantage now?
You do not need to bet the company on every possibility. But you do need a way to learn faster than competitors.
A pilot, a partnership, a prototype, a customer experiment, a new metric. The goal is not always immediate scale. Sometimes the goal is simply to earn the right to see the next move before others do.
Changing the Game
Make this week about changing the game, a topic I delivered two keynotes on recently. Ask your team: What became possible that was not possible before?
Then ask the more uncomfortable question: What are we still treating as a decision when it has quietly become a default?
Somewhere in that gap is your next strategy. The future rarely announces itself as a revolution. More often, it appears as a new possibility hiding in plain sight.
Find new possibilities by visiting Outthinker.com today.