Externalities.

Leaders reach for the convenient story: the problem is out there - a competitor, a regulator, a short seller, a shift in the market. It is logical, and it is a trap. What happens outside the company and what happens inside it are never unrelated.

The leader who sees only the external force - blind to how it reshapes the company's own perception, reaction, and thinking - is walking blind, and taking the company with them. Refuse the 'it's out there' story; read the external and the internal together.