A problem has a solution reachable from inside the situation. A trap does not. The distinction matters because executives are trained to treat every difficult situation as a problem, something that yields to analysis, resources, and will. Traps do not yield. They tighten.

Organisational inertia is a trap, not a problem. The forces that made the strategy successful are the same forces that make revision expensive. The processes built to execute the strategy must be partially dismantled to revise it. The culture formed around its results will read the revision as an attack on what worked. The people hired to operate it will experience the change as a repudiation of their competence. None of this is irrational. From inside the organisation, dismantling what the strategy built looks exactly like destroying what works, because in a real sense, it is.

The stronger the execution, the higher the switching cost. The organisation that most distinguished itself on the current strategy is exactly the one with the most to lose by revising it. Success is not just a lagging indicator of past alignment. It is an active obstacle to future adaptation.

The executive who waits for the evidence to become undeniable before beginning revision has already lost the window. The trap does not announce itself. It closes gradually, through a thousand small decisions that each made sense at the time, until the pressure is urgent and the cost is no longer a choice.