Why Has Strategy Become Irrelevant? Understanding the Complete Strategy Landscape

Abstract

Developing the firm’s strategy was once seen as the most important task facing a CEO. Yet in the last twenty years, the practice of strategy has been relegated to a routinized function – part of the annual planning process, like performance management and succession planning reviews – necessary and useful, but neither vitally important nor the focus of CEO attention. Why has strategy lost its primacy and relevance? And can it recover its exalted position in C-suite discussions?