The core problem with mission and strategy

Leaders spend an interesting amount of time arguing about mission and strategy. These are military metaphors for campaigns to conquer enemies. The most fundamental reason leaders struggle is not about their incompetence or lack of will. It's because the metaphor simply doesn't apply. 

There are many organizations focused on doing good. They don't have enemies. Their work doesn't involve military offensive. Their work lives in a whole different realm of creativity, innovation and sensitive delivery of value to markets.

They need dream-inspired approaches to deep listening and surprising the imagination of their markets. It has nothing to do with a mission and strategy of force, conquering and capturing, or debilitating other organizations. They find meaning in an organic growth imperative. 

Is strategy dead?

In a recent piece, "Is the era of management over?" The World Economic Forum raises the vital and timely question of whether strategy is dead.

In a world of unprecedented VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) how much predictability will we have for significant and viable strategies? Strategies are only as valid as their predictive assumptions are reliable. 

We're seeing Teflon talent refusing to stick around, disruptive technologies and robotics and algorithms replacing any kind of work that is repeatable or needs to be supervised.

The churn of new possibilities is dizzying and unpredictable. Nimble teams replace strategy with dreams. Dreams are agile descriptions of what we would love to see possible. They are lenses revealing new possibilities in the present. The farther out we dream, the larger the lenses. The winners will be those who have better lenses to see emergent possibilities of flourishing.