Not One, Not Two: The Radical Art of Connected Leadership

The Beautiful Lie of Being Separate

One of humanity's greatest magic tricks is imagining we're all separate beings—like islands floating in empty space, each one complete and alone. This beautiful lie takes the overwhelming truth of how deeply we're all connected and compresses it down to something our minds can hold.

The story we tell ourselves is simple: You do you. I do me. And without a word being said, we both imagine ourselves as two separate beings interacting.

And we build our whole world on this story. My tribe, your tribe. Us and them. We dance together and drift apart, we compete and collaborate, we love and we fight—but always as separate beings bouncing off each other like billiard balls.

Our simple fiction grows and grows, like turtles stacked on turtles, holding up the world.

The Truth We Hide From

But underneath this careful story lies something we've trained ourselves not to see.

We are 99.9% the same in our very DNA—yet we obsess over that tiny sliver of difference. We swim in the same cultural ocean from the moment we're born. Our hearts break the same way. We all agree the grass is green, the sky is blue, without ever discussing it. We dream the same dreams, fear the same darkness, reach for the same light.

The left side of our brain—that master storyteller—works overtime to keep the boundaries clear and the walls high. It drowns out the right side's whispered truth: that we are all connected in ways too profound for words.

Turning off that voice of separation is like trying to stop breathing. It fights back. It insists. It panics.

When the Walls Come Down

But when we manage to dim this constant assertion of separateness—even momentarily—a different picture emerges. We begin to perceive ourselves as slight variations in a vast field of similarity, like individual peaks rising from a single mountain range, each seeming separate from the valley below but all sharing the same geological foundation.

Or perhaps we're more like waves: temporary arrangements of the ocean's surface, each with its own shape and momentum, yet inseparable from the water that forms us all.

In spiritual traditions, this recognition goes by many names—non-duality, interconnectedness, or my preferred formulation: "not one, not two" because we're neither completely separate nor completely the same.

We exist in that shimmering space between, where boundaries are real but not solid, where you end and I begin is always a question, never an answer. Our beings, our identity, our energy, and even our minds are connected and overlapping. 

Leading From the Space Between

Leaders who feel this truth in their bones lead differently. They put more weight on the importance of shared mental models – values, purpose, strategy – and the power of these shared models to make life and work more meaningful. They know that meaning doesn't live in any one person but blooms in the spaces between us, in the quality of our connection.

It's dizzyingly hard to see the system you're part of while you're inside it—like trying to see your own eyes without a mirror. But in that impossible effort, something shifts. You start to see the real connectedness at work -- that cause and effect isn't a straight line but flows of energy circulating matter and information in complex warps and wefts that weave together to form living systems held together and brought to consciousness via the marvel of paradox in which not one, not two is the reality.

Strategy as Poetry

For the most part, strategic leaders and advisors will tell you that strategy is either about crafting a long-term vision for achieving structural advantage (a destination construct) or it's about guiding the company forward in some strategic way (a journey construct).

They will tell you to choose: Are you heading for a destination, or are you focused on the journey? Plan or adapt? Vision or flexibility?

But those who understand "not one, not two" refuse this choice. They know that strategy isn't about picking sides—it's about dancing with both at once. The destination gives meaning to each step; each step reveals new destinations. They spiral around each other like DNA strands, creating something neither could build alone.

This isn't about having it both ways—it's about recognizing that "both ways" is the only way anything actually works. The best solutions don't just succeed today; they gather power like rolling thunder, transforming what tomorrow can become.

It’s in this coupling of journey and destination that you find the most interesting solutions that provide not only success in the near term but also a building of power over time that transforms what the future company is all about.

The Art of Holding Opposites

Working this way demands a different kind of strength. You must dream of distant shores while feeling the ground beneath your feet. You must nudge the system toward your hopes while staying open to its surprises. This is strategy as gardening—less about building from blueprints, more about tending conditions so the right future can bloom.

The trick is to get comfortable that you need both and to refuse to fall into the narrative that one way is superior to the other and that together you find a best alternatives.

Working strategy like this is not easy – it requires lots of thought and foresight about where you think you want to land and lots of effort into what nudges you want to make in the near term to influence the future that emerges.  It is a way of working that makes strategy more enactive and less predictive or deterministic.

It means making peace with paradox. Acting with conviction while embracing uncertainty. Leading decisively while staying fluid. Being a wave while remembering you're also the ocean.

The Deeper Truth

This way of thinking and leading isn't just clever—it's true. It matches the actual fabric of reality, where every boundary is a decision, not a fact. Where everything touches everything else through invisible threads. Where the most powerful strategies come from embracing the contradictions instead of solving them.

When we stop insisting that life must be either/or and start seeing it as both/and, new worlds open up. We can be fierce individuals AND part of something greater. We can have clear plans AND dance with chaos. We can be separate waves AND the same ocean, all at once, all the time.

In the end, this isn't about philosophy or business theory. It's about seeing clearly. And when we see clearly—when we glimpse how deeply connected we really are—everything changes. How we lead. How we plan. How we love. How we live.

The walls between us are real, but they're also imaginary. We are separate, but we're also one.

Beginning Tomorrow

The question isn't whether you'll continue living in the fiction of separation—we all will. We must. It's how we function. The question is whether you'll remember, even for moments, what lies beneath.

Start small. In your next meeting, notice how ideas don't come FROM people but BETWEEN them. Watch how the best solutions emerge not from any one mind but from the space where minds meet.

When you're crafting strategy, resist the pressure to choose between vision and flexibility. Hold both. Let them inform each other. Make decisions that work today while building capabilities for tomorrow.

When conflict arises, remember: you're not colliding billiard balls but waves in the same ocean, temporarily flowing in different directions.

This isn't about abandoning your individuality or dissolving into some mystical unity. It's about playing your unique note while hearing the symphony. It's about being fully yourself while remembering you're part of something vast and interconnected.

The paradox is the path. Not one, not two, but something more beautiful than either.

And that changes everything.

—
Stay lucky,
Alex

Alex Nesbitt
Founder, Strategy Academy

P.S. When you're ready, here are 3 ways I can help you:

(1) Contact me for 1:1 CEO coaching and advisory services

(2) Take my online master class (use coupon code SUMMER25 for a $50 discount) - Strategic Thinking for Advantage

(3) Apply to the Strategy Accelerator program for leaders and strategic professionals who want to master strategy in action.