“It was a time of great ambition, aggressive growth rates, and fierce competition. Managers on all levels devised clever tactics, crafted cunning strategies, and meticulously planned every step of their journey towards success.
They saw the world as a finite game, where customers, employees, and competitors all played their part. It was a game of high exploitation and deep devastation, where the winners took all and the losers were left in the dust.
In these days, the essence of strategy was to formulate a winning aspiration, before figuring out where to play and how to win. The process produced a solid detailed implementation plan. From there, it was about following the procedure and reducing deviation to achieve the goals.
So it seemed, but in reality the strategies failed or were never executed. Most business environments were too complex and dynamic for any fixed strategy to survive. Working strategically looked more and more like a hazardous game.
Then, something important happened.
A small group of wise leaders realized that strategy had to be more than clever words and smart action points. To attract and engage people, the strategy needed to come alive. Literally. And the best way to achieve this was to tell captivating and reliable stories about the why, what and how of the…