— When I started the research that became my dissertation, executives kept describing what felt like a collective anxiety attack. Markets shifted faster than their annual strategy retreats; PowerPoints aged before the board meeting ended. I called this dissonance “the silent revolution,” a shift from industrial predictability to a knowledge economy that demands perpetual regeneration.
Traditional strategy, with its five‑year road maps and tidy SWOT grids, was designed for a calmer century. In today’s hyper‑competitive environment—where advantage evaporates in quarters, not decades—we need something more organic: strategic capacity, the organization‑wide ability to sense change, learn, decide and pivot again and again. I define it as “the ability of an organization to obtain its vision, mission and goals … by collectively making strategic choices and dynamically deploying critical resources.”
The Six Muscles of Adaptability
My study of 39 strategy exemplars surfaced six “meta‑capabilities”—muscles that create other muscles: relational generativity, learning, sense‑managing, change capability, combination capability and the SOAR framework, a strengths‑based alternative to SWOT.
Together they form an upward spiral: teams start from strengths, imagine new possibilities, act, reflect and act again, each loop expanding confidence and competence.
Governance as Jazz, Not Sheet Music
To choreograph those loops, I observed what I now call a high‑engagement strategic governance system: regular, inclusive conversations that pair real‑time data with story‑telling and experimentation. Unlike the binder that gathers dust, this rhythm keeps strategy “alive in the minds of the people,” as one interviewee told me.
The payoff of engaging “the full system” is striking—trust, faster information flow and a sense that everyone owns the playbook, not just the C‑suite.
Why Positivity Matters
SOAR (Strengths‑Opportunities‑Aspirations‑Results) accelerates every other capability by replacing deficit language with possibility. In participant organizations, SOAR sessions built psychological safety, unlocked cross‑boundary ideas and translated aspirations into 90‑day results.
What Leaders Can Do This Quarter
A Civic Imperative
Business is, as Peter Drucker called it, the “economic engine of democracy.” Strategic capacity equips that engine with shock absorbers. In a world of serial disruptions, our greatest advantage may be teaching organizations to think—and rethink—for themselves.
