Strategy doesn’t start with a spreadsheet. It begins with a story.
Image: Svitlana/Adobe Stock; Tartila/Adobe Stock
Most companies operate like one-sided cubes—what the world sees is curated and polished, but the rest remains hidden, even to the people inside. Strategy becomes surface-level. Teams chase goals without grounding. Leaders lead without alignment.
In a world growing more complex and emotionally disoriented, that’s not just unsustainable—it’s dangerous. It’s time for a Strategy Renaissance. We need to move beyond sterile planning cycles and rediscover the human heart of strategy.
In this new era of work, meaning isn’t a bonus feature—it’s your sharpest edge.
We have long treated strategy as the realm of numbers and logic, while purpose was relegated to the marketing department or buried in mission statements no one remembers.
This divide has created companies that appear aligned on paper, but feel disjointed in practice. Metrics without meaning drive burnout. Planning without purpose breeds disengagement. And when disruption inevitably hits, strategies built only on spreadsheets crumble.
What endures? Shared purpose, collective clarity, and meaningful momentum.
Imagine your organisation as a cube. Each face represents a facet of identity: values, operations, leadership, culture, customers, and employees.
Most companies only illuminate one or two sides—the brand and the performance dashboard. The rest remains in the shadows. And when strategy reflects only the visible parts, it becomes hollow.
The companies that are thriving today are the ones brave enough to illuminate the whole cube. That means surfacing the hidden brilliance within teams, reclaiming the narratives that shape culture, and embracing the messy, multidimensional nature of real human work.
I advised a global biotech company whose strategy had become siloed, driven by financial targets but disconnected from employee experience. Through facilitated dialogue sessions, we helped the executive team rediscover their collective purpose.
Within months, they restructured their planning process around a set of guiding principles, resulting in a 22% improvement in employee engagement scores and a renewed sense of cohesion across departments.
When you bring every side of the cube into the light, strategy becomes not just aligned, but alive.
Strategy doesn’t start with a spreadsheet. It begins with a story. Before defining your next bold move, gather your people around a campfire—not a literal fire (though that helps), but a space of intentional dialogue where people can share pivotal moments, hopes, fears, and what really matters.
When I run campfire sessions with leadership teams, something powerful happens: People stop performing and start connecting. The surface melts, and what emerges is a collective clarity that no off-site whiteboard session can replicate.
Great strategy isn’t declared—it’s co-created. It emerges from shared stories and is strengthened by mutual meaning.
Today’s workforce isn’t just looking for a paycheck. They’re looking for alignment, especially Gen Z and millennial talent. They want to know what you stand for, how decisions are made, and whether your values are actually lived.
A McKinsey study found that 70% of employees believe their sense of purpose is defined by their work; however, only 15% feel their company’s purpose is well-activated in their day-to-day roles.
That gap isn’t just cultural—it’s costly. Meaning is no longer a perk. It’s your recruitment strategy. Your innovation strategy. Your long-game success strategy.
This Strategy Renaissance demands a new kind of thinking, which I call multidimensional strategy.
In a world that rewards specialisation, it’s time to embrace integration: blending creativity with analysis, intuition with logic, and personal story with business direction.
We need leaders who don’t just see the road ahead—they see the people walking it. They know that strategy isn’t just about what to do next. It’s about who we are, why it matters, and how we move forward—together.
If you want to move from hollow plans to meaningful progress, here’s a simple framework to “LIGHT” your way—five ways to reclaim strategy as a human-centred practice:
Don’t think of this as a checklist; think of it as a shift in perspective, from a performative strategy to a purposeful design.
The Renaissance was a reawakening of human potential. What we need now is no different.
Let this be the moment your organisation stops performing purpose and starts living it. Allow this to be the season when strategy becomes more than a plan. Let it become a story that your people want to tell—a movement they want to lead.
When you illuminate the full spectrum of who you are as an organization, strategy becomes not just compelling but unforgettable.
