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This has been a demanding year for leaders, not because of one disruption, but because of the simultaneity of many forces unfolding at once.
Geopolitical volatility continues to shape trade, investment, and risk. Climate realities have moved from future concern to present condition. Rapid advances in AI are fundamentally changing how decisions are made, how work gets done, and how trust is built. At the same time, the economic landscape has remained uneven, with easing but persistent inflation pressures and cautious capital allocation.
In this context, it is easy to feel overwhelmed. But something interesting is happening.
When even McKinsey talks about meditation
When even McKinsey start writing about the value of meditation and reflective work, you get a sense that the ground is shifting.
In a recent article, Information vs. wisdom: Why meditation is essential for leaders in the age of AI, a senior McKinsey partner shares that in a world dominated by algorithms, the scarcest leadership resource is no longer information, but wisdom — and that inner practices are not retreats from reality, but ways of meeting it more clearly and ethically.
What I see in my own work mirrors this. As complexity increases, clarity, discernment, and presence are no longer “nice to have.” They are becoming core leadership capacities.
Strategy is not dead — it never was
For me, this is not new territory.
Almost a decade ago, I wrote an article for INSEAD titled Why strategy is not dead. At the time, strategy was already being questioned as too slow or rigid for a fast-changing world.
My argument then — which still holds — was that strategy endures not despite our humanity, but because of it.
At its best, strategy serves deeply human needs:
- Focus — helping us direct limited attention toward what matters most.
- Foresight — supporting our capacity to think ahead and take responsibility for the future.
- Learning — creating space for reflection, without which experience does not become wisdom.
In an increasingly distracted and accelerated world, these capacities are becoming more — not less — important.
Why strategy itself must evolve
What has changed is the context in which strategy is practiced.
As articulated in Your Strategy Needs a Strategy already in 2012, a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world cannot be met with a single, static strategic approach. Different environments call for different strategic logics. Hence, the classical approache to strategy alone is not enough.
Today, this insight is converging with something deeper.
Strategy is increasingly asked to do more than allocate resources or define competitive positioning.
The process for developing a strategy needs deep reflection. And the strategy itself is asked to express purpose, hold longer time horizons, and integrate ethical and systemic responsibility alongside performance. Finally, it needs involvement and activation to become true.
This demands not only new tools, but new capacities in those who lead.
Why reflection is not a luxury
This is why leadership is becoming less about doing more — and more about creating the conditions to see clearly before acting.
That reflective pause can take many forms:
- A deliberate time-out for strategic review, stepping back from execution to reassess direction.
- Executive coaching, working with assumptions, patterns, and developmental edges.
- Facilitated reflection with leadership teams, enabling deeper sensemaking and shared responsibility.
What matters is not the format, but the intention.
To slow down internally — so decisions and strategies can move forward more wisely.
A quiet but meaningful shift
When economic recovery is expected but complexity remains; when AI accelerates but discernment becomes scarcer; when strategy must adapt but human limits remain — something fundamental is revealed.
Leadership, strategy, and human development are no longer separate conversations.
They are becoming one.
And perhaps this is the deeper invitation of our time: not to abandon strategy or leadership as we know them, but to evolve them — so we can meet complexity with clarity, responsibility, and wisdom.
Contact us if you want to explore what this could mean for your next strategy review process.