The Law
Every industry develops unwritten rules. These are the kinds of companies that acquire. These are the businesses that get acquired. This is how integration should work. This is how leaders are expected to behave.
Robert Greene’s seventeenth law says to cultivate unpredictability and keep others off balance. Taken literally into M&A, that would be dangerous. A leader who proudly signals that nobody knows what they will do next does not create strategic advantage. They create anxiety. Investors hesitate. Employees lose confidence. Regulators become suspicious. Counterparties price in uncertainty.
But beneath the dark framing is a powerful strategic lesson. Predictability can become a prison. Competitors learn your playbook. Investors assume your boundaries. Employees stop imagining alternatives. Even leadership begins mistaking habit for wisdom.
The professional version is not to be erratic. It is to be adaptable. Let people be certain about your values, but uncertain about the limits of your imagination. Be predictable in integrity, discipline and fairness. Be unpredictable in the possibilities you are willing to explore.
Be predictable in values and unpredictable in possibilities.
Law 16 was about selective presence. Law 17 is about selective reinvention. The strongest organisations do not change everything all the time. They protect what must remain constant and rethink everything else before the market forces them to.
The M&A Translation
The M&A translation of Law 17 is this: stay anchored to your principles, adaptable in everything else.
Organisations love predictability. Analysts build models. Investors forecast earnings. Employees settle into routines. Competitors study patterns. Advisors know which buyers are active, which sectors they prefer, how they negotiate, how they integrate and where they usually stop.
That predictability is useful until it becomes rigidity. We have never acquired in that sector. We only grow organically. We do not buy capabilities we can build. We do not enter consumer markets. We do not buy data businesses. We do not change the commercial model. Some of these statements may be real discipline. Others may be old assumptions wearing the clothes of strategy.
M&A often becomes the instrument through which an organisation breaks its own predictable pattern. A company buys a capability it once believed it had to build internally. A software business shifts from licences to subscriptions. A pharmaceutical company buys data infrastructure. A retailer buys content. A traditional industrial company buys digital capability.
The point is not to surprise for the sake of surprise. The point is to keep the organisation capable of becoming what the future requires.
If everyone can perfectly predict your future, they may only be studying your past.
Where This Shows Up in a Deal
Law 17 appears wherever an organisation’s old identity begins to limit its future options.
It appears in corporate strategy, when leadership has to decide whether to protect a legacy model or acquire the capability that could replace it. It appears in sector expansion, when a buyer considers an unfamiliar asset that does not fit the market’s existing perception of the company. It appears in technology and data acquisitions, where future capability may look unrelated through yesterday’s business model.
It appears in integration, when a team applies the old playbook to a new type of target and discovers that the method no longer fits. It appears in boardrooms, when directors ask whether consistency is still discipline or has quietly become complacency. It appears in founder-led businesses, where the original identity of the company may become the very constraint that prevents the next stage of growth.
In each setting, the strategic question is the same. Which parts of the company must remain predictable, and which parts must remain capable of surprise?
The Deal Power Map
For Law 17, the power map is an adaptability map. The question is not whether the organisation should be predictable or unpredictable. It is where predictability builds trust, and where unpredictability opens future value.
Five Questions to Map Strategic Adaptability
Before calling something discipline, test whether it is still useful or only familiar.
- 1What is truly non-negotiable?
Name the values and principles that should remain predictable: integrity, capital discipline, customer trust, employee respect, regulatory seriousness and fairness.
- 2What is only habit?
Identify the rules that may have become inherited assumptions: sectors avoided, deal types rejected, integration methods repeated or business models defended without fresh reasoning.
- 3Where is the market moving faster than our identity?
Look for customer behaviour, technology, data, regulation, talent, distribution or ecosystem shifts that challenge how the company currently defines itself.
- 4Which adjacent possibility are we dismissing?
The most valuable future capability may sit near the business, not inside the category the company currently uses to describe itself.
- 5What would we do if we were founding this company today?
This question separates tradition from strategy. It forces leadership to ask which choices still make sense under current conditions.
Cases from the Deal Floor
These cases show the same move: organisations that refused to be imprisoned by their own patterns, and the questions that broke predictable thinking open.
Disney–Pixar2006
A company built on its own creative engine choosing to buy creativity instead.
Disney’s identity was built around creating animation internally. For decades, the company was not merely a distributor of animated stories. It was the creative institution that defined the category.
That is why the Pixar acquisition looked unusual to some observers. Why should Disney buy creativity it was supposed to already possess? The answer was that preserving the old self-image mattered less than protecting future relevance.
By acquiring Pixar and respecting the creative force it brought, Disney did not abandon its values. It renewed them. The company remained committed to storytelling, family entertainment and creative excellence, but it changed the route through which those values would be expressed.
Organisations that redefine themselves before necessity forces them often outperform those that wait until the old model has already weakened.
Organisations that redefine themselves before necessity often outperform those forced to adapt later.
Microsoft–LinkedIn2016
A software company acquiring a professional network that looked like an odd fit.
For decades, Microsoft was primarily understood through software, operating systems, productivity tools and enterprise technology. A professional network did not fit neatly inside the old category.
That is why the LinkedIn acquisition seemed surprising to many. But leadership saw a broader convergence: work, identity, professional relationships, enterprise data and productivity were beginning to connect.
The transaction expanded Microsoft’s strategic horizon. LinkedIn did not merely add a product. It gave Microsoft a position in the professional graph and a new way to understand how work and relationships intersect.
The most valuable opportunities often sit outside the categories others assign to you.
Sometimes the most valuable opportunities sit outside the categories others assign to you.
Amazon–MGM2022
A company understood as a retailer buying a film studio.
Amazon had already stretched public perception before MGM. It was not only an online retailer, but a logistics engine, a cloud infrastructure leader, a device company and a subscription ecosystem. Even then, buying a film studio pushed the perception further.
Why would a retailer buy a studio? The answer was ecosystem thinking. Amazon was building multiple pathways into customers’ lives: shopping, cloud, devices, subscriptions, entertainment and household attention.
MGM gave Amazon content, library value and a stronger position in streaming competition. The move made sense only if one stopped defining Amazon by its oldest category.
If others can perfectly predict your future, your growth opportunities may already be shrinking.
If others can perfectly predict your future, your growth opportunities may already be shrinking.
Adobe's Subscription Shift
A hugely successful licence business choosing to dismantle its own model.
Adobe had built an enormously successful business selling perpetual software licences. The model was profitable, familiar and understood by customers and investors. Changing it created real risk.
The shift to subscription required Adobe to disrupt itself before disruption forced the move. Customers resisted. Investors worried. Revenue recognition, customer relationships and product cadence all had to change.
But leadership understood that the future would reward ongoing customer relationships, cloud delivery, recurring revenue and continuous product improvement. Adobe did not abandon its creative-software identity. It changed the model through which that identity would remain relevant.
Reinvention is easier when chosen voluntarily than when imposed by crisis.
Reinvention is easier when chosen voluntarily rather than imposed by crisis.
Roche–Flatiron Health2018
A traditional pharmaceutical company buying an oncology data and analytics business.
Traditional pharmaceutical strategy focused on research, development, clinical trials, regulatory approval and commercialisation of medicines. A real-world oncology data and analytics business did not fit the old picture of what a drugmaker acquires.
Roche saw a different future. Clinical and commercial advantage would increasingly depend on real-world evidence, data quality, patient journeys and the ability to learn from oncology care beyond conventional trial settings.
The Flatiron acquisition expanded what a pharmaceutical company could become. It showed that future capability may not look like the current business at all, even when it supports the same mission.
Future capabilities often appear unrelated through the lens of yesterday’s business model.
Future capabilities often appear unrelated through the lens of yesterday’s business model.
The Deal Team That Always Used the Same Playbook
A team with polished templates, comprehensive checklists and dozens of successful integrations behind it.
The team had a strong track record. Their process was efficient, repeatable and proven. They knew the workstreams, the templates, the governance cadence and the standard integration risks.
Then a cross-border technology acquisition arrived, and the methods that had worked repeatedly began to fail. Employees resisted in unfamiliar ways. Customers reacted differently. Product velocity mattered more than formal reporting. The pace of innovation demanded flexibility the old templates did not allow.
The team first responded by enforcing the old approach more aggressively. Only later did they see that experience had quietly become rigidity. Success returned when they adapted their methods rather than defending them.
The practices that created yesterday’s success can become tomorrow’s constraints.
The practices that created yesterday’s success can become tomorrow’s constraints.
The CEO's Unexpected Question
A board reviewing acquisition targets along entirely familiar lines.
The discussion followed the usual script. Revenue growth, synergy potential, valuation multiples, integration complexity, financing, regulatory risk and operating fit. Everyone knew their role. Everyone understood the familiar decision path.
Then the CEO asked a different question: if we were founding this company today, would we still choose to operate exactly as we do now?
Silence filled the room. For the first time, people separated tradition from strategy. Some assumptions survived the scrutiny. Others did not. The eventual decision looked very different from the one originally expected because the question shifted the frame from preserving the past to designing the future.
Sometimes leadership means disrupting predictable thinking before external forces do it for you.
Sometimes leadership means disrupting predictable thinking before external forces do it for you.
The Pattern Behind the Cases
Across these cases, the pattern is not chaos. It is anchored adaptability.
Disney remained committed to storytelling, but changed how it renewed creative relevance. Microsoft remained committed to productivity and enterprise relevance, but expanded into the professional graph. Amazon remained committed to customer ecosystem power, but extended into entertainment content. Adobe remained committed to creative software, but transformed the commercial model. Roche remained committed to improving healthcare, but acquired data capability as part of that future.
The practitioner cases show the same pattern inside deal teams and boards. A proven integration playbook became too rigid for a new kind of deal. A CEO’s question broke the assumption that today’s company should simply extend yesterday’s choices.
The lesson is not to become unpredictable in character. That destroys trust. The lesson is to remain stable in values while refusing to let old methods define the limits of future imagination.
The strongest reinventions protect the mission while changing the method.
Four Diagnostic Questions
Before defending the familiar path, ask four questions.
The Four Questions That Protect Adaptability
These questions help separate discipline from habit and principle from rigidity.
- 11. If we were founding this company today, would we still operate exactly as we do now?
This question forces leadership to distinguish inherited choices from choices that still make strategic sense.
- 22. Which of our “we do not do that” rules is real discipline, and which is just habit?
Some boundaries protect value. Others protect comfort. The work is knowing the difference.
- 33. Am I confusing experience with certainty about how the future works?
Experience is valuable until it becomes a filter that rejects new evidence too quickly.
- 44. What adjacent possibility am I dismissing only because it sits outside our category?
The next strategic capability may look unfamiliar precisely because it belongs to the future business, not the current one.
The Four Dimensions of Strategic Adaptability
Adaptability is not the absence of consistency. It is consistency about the right things. Four dimensions hold the balance between stability of identity and flexibility of execution.
- 1Predictable values
People should understand your principles. Integrity should never surprise anyone.
- 2Flexible strategies
Methods should evolve as circumstances change. Past success should not dictate future choices.
- 3Expanding possibilities
Challenge assumptions about who you can become, and explore adjacent opportunities.
- 4Continuous relearning
Treat every success as provisional, and stay curious enough to revise your own playbook.
How to Apply This at Your Level
Role Lens: Senior, Mid-Level and Junior
If you are a CEO, founder, partner, managing director, board member or investor, do not let consistency curdle into complacency. Encourage dissenting views and regularly question inherited assumptions. The future rarely resembles the plans that created the present, so the playbook that built today is not guaranteed to build tomorrow.
At every level, Law 17 asks for the same discipline: let your values anchor you, but do not let your habits imprison you.
The Trap
The trap of Law 17 is mistaking unpredictability for strategic depth.
Some leaders hear the word unpredictability and start celebrating surprise for its own sake. They change direction without explanation, enter markets without logic, confuse stakeholders, overuse the language of transformation and treat instability as boldness. That is not adaptability. It is noise.
Unpredictability without values destroys trust. If employees cannot understand what leadership stands for, they hesitate. If investors cannot understand the capital allocation logic, they discount the story. If regulators cannot understand the public-interest logic, they become cautious. If counterparties cannot understand your behaviour, they price in risk.
There is an opposite trap as well: mistaking predictability for discipline. Some organisations repeat the old playbook because it worked before. They call it consistency, but it may only be fear of change. They stay inside their category until the category itself stops growing.
The mature version of Law 17 is anchored adaptability. Be deeply predictable in character. Be disciplined in capital allocation. Be clear in values. But remain imaginative enough that your future is not limited by other people’s old description of you.
Unpredictability without values is chaos. Predictability without imagination is decline.
The Paradox at the End of Law 17
The paradox of Law 17 is that the organisations people trust most are often deeply predictable in their values, while the organisations that thrive longest are frequently unpredictable in how they pursue those values.
They know exactly what they believe. They simply refuse to believe there is only one way to succeed.
Every successful organisation faces a dangerous temptation: to assume the future will reward the same behaviours that built the past. The habits become traditions. The traditions become rules. The rules become identity. Before anyone notices, adaptability has quietly disappeared.
Markets evolve. Technologies shift. Customer expectations change. Data becomes strategic. Distribution moves. New competitors emerge from unexpected places. The leaders who endure protect what must remain constant while having the courage to rethink everything else.
That is the difference between being inconsistent and being adaptive. Inconsistency changes because it lacks conviction. Adaptability changes because conviction has found a better path. Because the future belongs not to those who repeat themselves perfectly, but to those who know when it is time to become something new.
Let others be certain about your character. Let them be uncertain about the limits of your imagination.
Predictable Values, Unpredictable Possibilities
In M&A, let people be certain about your character and uncertain about the limits of your imagination. Stay anchored to your principles, adaptable in everything else.
Because the future belongs not to those who repeat themselves perfectly, but to those who know when it is time to become something new.
Before your next meeting on a live deal, ask yourself:
- 1.If we were founding this company today, would we still operate exactly as we do now?
- 2.Which of our “we do not do that” rules is real discipline, and which is just habit?
- 3.Am I confusing my experience with certainty about how the future works?
- 4.What adjacent possibility am I dismissing only because it sits outside our category?