There’s a question that’s been rising in my throat lately.
Sometimes quietly, sometimes with a kind of simmering disbelief.
Boardrooms. Townhalls. News scrolls. WhatsApp groups filled with pitch decks and power plays.

What’s your endgame?

Not the quarterly number. Not the exit plan. Not the tweet with three fire emojis and a graph. The real one. The one that still exists after the applause dies down.
The one that takes shape in what your choices cost, after the headlines, after the round, after you’ve left the room.

I. The Optics of Order

I thought about it again last week, watching Gurgaon announce a crackdown on “illegal migrants.”
The language was predictable. Rehearsed. A city reclaiming control.
Phrases like “law and order” thrown around like disinfectant.

But who are these people being swept up by policy and PR?

They are the ones who built the buildings, mixed the concrete, cleaned the offices, watched the children, delivered the food.
People who’ve spent years becoming part of the city’s daily rhythm- quietly visible, structurally invisible.

Now, suddenly, they are the threat.
Now, they must go.

It’s not governance. It’s theatre.
Control performed, not practiced.

It plays well on news channels. It makes housing societies feel orderly again.
It doesn’t fix a single thing.

II. We’ve Seen This Before

This isn’t new. Not here, not anywhere.
We’ve seen this play out in different accents, on different stages.

Trump and his walls.
Brexit and its borders.
Startups that blame “talent mismatch” for layoffs they planned last year.

It’s always the same pattern.
Find a scapegoat. Declare urgency. Look busy. Appear strong.
Do something, anything, that buys you attention and time.

But no one talks about what comes after.
What breaks quietly. What trust collapses.
What systems fray under the weight of symbolic decisions.

III. The Corporate Mirror

You’ll find the same pattern in offices.

A team is let go to signal “focus.”
A rushed product is launched to “move fast.”
Someone raises a concern and gets labelled “not aligned.”
A slide is changed. A value is bent. A decision is made to survive the moment.

Later, they’ll say it was temporary.
Just for this phase. Just to get through the quarter.
They promise they’ll fix it later.

But later never comes with a map.
And by the time you circle back, the foundation’s already cracked.

IV. Why Do We Keep Doing This?

Because short-term thinking feels like action.
Because it rewards performance, not patience.
Because long-term thinking makes you sit in the discomfort of not yet.

It asks for slowness.It asks for clarity.
It asks you to say, “We don’t know,” and stay in the room anyway.

And we are not a culture that’s good at that.

We’d rather look decisive than be deliberate.
We’d rather patch it fast than ask why it broke.
We’d rather look powerful than be accountable.

V. What Story Are You Really Telling?

Here’s the thing.
Every organization, every city, every leader, is telling a story.
Even when they don’t realize it.

And a story only works if it has consequence.

What you do on page four has to matter on page thirty.
Otherwise, people stop believing.
In the plot. In the purpose. In you.

When your choices don’t carry through, your values become slogans.
Your team stops listening.
Your customers stop trusting.
Your people stop staying.

VI. So Really – What’s Your Endgame?

You let go of people. You bend a policy. You launch a half-finished thing.
You silence someone. You reframe a failure. You call it resilience.
You survive.

But what are you building?

What will outlast your title, your term, your LinkedIn headline?
What will still be standing five years from now that was shaped by the choices you’re making today?

Because if you don’t know,
If you’re only reacting, only trying to win the moment,
then you’re not leading.

You’re just moving.
And someone else, your team, your users, your city will be left to make meaning out of the wreckage.

VII. The Cost of Not Asking

We keep telling ourselves that later, we’ll make it right.
We’ll recalibrate. Realign. Clean up the corners.

But most damage doesn’t announce itself.
It shows up quietly, in morale, in trust, in people leaving early and never saying why.
It lives in what doesn’t get said anymore.

So yes, I keep asking: What’s your endgame?
And not out of judgment. Out of concern.
Out of a belief that leadership still has the power to be more than theatre.

Because survival is not a strategy.
It is a temporary pause.
And if you stay in it long enough, you forget what building even felt like.

Thanks for reading.
If this resonates, I’d love to know what you’re building that’s meant to last.
And if you’re tired of survival mode – this space is for you.