KNEE STRATEGY

Strategy that is truly timeless often looks radically simple. You only experience the true benefits of strategy when you practise it repeatedly until it becomes second nature.

Over the past five months I’ve been applying the same framework I use when facilitating strategy for organisations to an unexpected personal project: recovering my knee and avoiding surgery.

My strategy framework is simple:

Q1. What is really going on here?

Q2. What are our options?

Q3. What will we do?

What is really going on here?

This step is about confronting reality honestly, not avoiding it, not minimising it. It means spending the time and effort to understand the situation and gaining clarity for creating options.

After my post-marathon sprinting strain, I did the usual rest, lengthen and strengthen work: swimming, cycling, VMO and glute strengthening, backwards walking and run/walk protocols, slowly sharpening the picture.

Then the time came, as the Walrus once said, “To talk of other things. Of sailing ships and sealing wax and what is going on with my knee.” Apologies to Lewis Carroll.

Last Friday I slid into an MRI machine. The result: a tear in the posterior horn of my medial meniscus. It may or may not need an arthroscopic clean up, but now I have more clarity, which brings me to…

What are my options?

Before jumping into a solution, pause. Breathe. Collect information from reliable sources while continuing my rehab.

This week I met with a top sports physio to raise my active recovery efforts and take his suggestion to shift from carbon plate running shoes to flexible ones. With Paul, I’m also exploring whether it’s wiser to transition from marathons with their heavier impact training toward Ironman triathlons that blend swim, ride and run.

I’m meeting a sports physician in early February and an orthopaedic surgeon in late January to triangulate the information I’m getting.

In the meantime my HITT sessions will stay in the pool. I’ll build up my bike miles, increase my monster walks, glute bridges, rowing intervals and add more yoga on the deck, to keep my engine running while my decisions take shape.

Soon I’ll reach the third question.

What will I do?

Whatever the outcome, my decision sits within a bigger horizon.

Do I stay committed to long distance run events or shift my energy back toward cycling, swimming, surfing and maybe basketball?

I don’t know yet. Good strategy is not about making the next decision fast. It’s about shaping the future we ultimately want to step into. Business is an infinite game, but our bodies are not. Knee cartilage does not last forever in the game of life.

For now I’m grateful for pain free movement, grateful for more clarity and grateful for the smart tools like MRIs that help see what’s true.