By Sénamé Agbossou The Strategy Meeting That Changed Everything Raphael sat in the corner of the conference room, watching his colleagues rapid-fire through decisions that would impact the next six months of product development. As Head of Strategic Planning, he'd prepared extensively for this meeting; analyzing market trends, competitor movements, and potential risks. But every time he tried to raise a strategic concern, someone cut him off with "We don't have time for analysis paralysis" or "Let's just move forward and adjust as we go." Three hours later, the team had made decisions that Raphael could see would create problems down the road. But in that fast-paced environment, his natural Sensemaker energy (the deep thinking and pattern recognition that made him invaluable), felt like a liability. Sound familiar? If you've ever felt like your thoughtfulness is seen as slowness, or your strategic perspective is dismissed as overthinking, you might be experiencing what I call energy misalignment. Understanding the Sensemaker in a Speed-Obsessed World Sensemakers are one of the five Work Energy Types I've identified through decades of leadership coaching. They bring clarity to complexity, see patterns others miss, and provide the strategic insight that prevents costly mistakes. In our Ubuntu philosophy, Sensemakers serve as the navigation system for the collective journey. While others focus on speed and immediate action, Sensemakers help ensure the team is heading in the right direction. But in today's business environment, with its emphasis on "fail fast" and "move quickly and break things," Sensemakers often feel like they're swimming upstream. The Real Cost of Speed Without Wisdom Here's what I've observed in organizations that consistently prioritize speed over strategic thinking: Short-term gains, long-term pain. Teams move quickly in the wrong direction, creating expensive course corrections later. Decision fatigue. When every choice is made rapidly without proper consideration, teams burn out from constantly dealing with the unintended consequences. Strategic blindness. Organizations lose the ability to see around corners, missing both opportunities and threats until they're unavoidable. Sensemaker exodus. Strategic thinkers leave for environments where their contributions are valued, taking critical institutional knowledge with them. Raphael's experience illustrates this perfectly. His team's rapid decisions in that strategy meeting led to three major product pivots over the following year; pivots that Raphael's initial analysis could have prevented. The Sensemaker's Dilemma Maria, a senior analyst at a consulting firm, described her frustration this way: "I can see the patterns that lead to client churn, but by the time I've done the analysis properly, my colleagues have already moved on to the next fire drill. Then six months later, we're dealing with exactly the problems I predicted." This is the Sensemaker's dilemma: their greatest value often lies in preventing problems that haven't happened yet, but fast-paced environments reward visible action over invisible prevention. Creating Ubuntu Teams: Balancing Speed and Wisdom The solution isn't to slow down every fast-paced team or to speed up every Sensemaker. It's to create what I call Ubuntu Teams: environments where different energy types can contribute their…