The cursor blinks at 6:46 PM, a rhythmic pulse that feels less like a computer function and more like a countdown. My finger hovers over the ‘Forward’ button. The attachment, ‘FY25 Strategic Vision_vFINAL.pptx’, is a 46-megabyte tombstone. It contains 86 slides of concentrated, distilled ambition, and I know with a chilling, bone-deep certainty that no human eye will ever linger on slide 36. My boss forwarded it to me with a note that simply said: ‘Pls review and provide feedback EOD.’ He sent it at 6:36 PM. He hasn’t read it. The Chief Operating Officer who requested it hasn’t read it. The 6-person task force that spent 126 days drafting it probably only read their own assigned sections. We are participating in a liturgical act, a secular prayer whispered into the void of the corporate server, hoping that the mere existence of the document will ward off the demons of quarterly stagnation.

When you see 86 slides of charts, your brain stops asking if the plan is good and starts asking if the font is consistent. It is a brilliant, accidental diversion. We are so busy arguing over the shade of blue used in the ‘Synergy’ quadrant that we forget to ask if ‘Synergy’ is even a thing that exists in nature.

Security Theater and the Compass Myth

Luca D.R. often points out that in high-stress environments, humans gravitate toward ‘Security Theater.’ The strategy document is the ultimate form of this. If the company fails next year, the executives can point to page 56 and say, ‘Look, we identified the risks! We had a mitigation plan! It’s right there between the SWOT analysis and the employee engagement survey!’

The document isn’t meant to guide the team through the woods; it’s meant to prove that the team owned a compass at the time they got lost. It is insurance. It is CYA (Cover Your Assets) elevated to an art form, a 46-page insurance policy that costs $256,000 in collective salary time and pays out in zero actionable insights.

[The document is a shield, not a sword.]

The Disconnect: Floors vs. Executives

I remember a meeting where a Project Manager spent 26 minutes explaining a slide titled ‘Holistic Ecosystem Optimization.’ When I asked what that meant for the people on the floor, he looked at me as if I’d asked him to recite poetry in a language that hadn’t been invented yet. He didn’t know. The slide wasn’t for the people on the floor. It was for the person sitting two levels above him, who needed to see the word ‘Optimization’ to feel like their bonus was justified.

This is the great disconnect. We build these massive, unreadable architectures of intent, while the actual world continues to operate on the messy, physical rules of gravity and friction. Compare this to something tangible. When you engage a company like

Elite Bathroom Renovations Melbourne, you aren’t looking for a 86-slide deck on the ‘Strategic Vision of Tile Placement.’ You want a bathroom that doesn’t leak and looks beautiful.

The Six-Slide Sanctuary

I find myself wondering if we could survive with just 6 slides. Slide 1: What are we doing? Slide 2: Why? Slide 3: Who is doing it? Slide 4: How do we know if we failed? Slide 5: What is the very first step? Slide 6: A picture of a cat to remind us we’re still human.

But we can’t do that. A 6-slide deck suggests that the problem is simple, and if the problem is simple, then why are we paying all these people so much money to solve it? The 86-page deck justifies the hierarchy. It validates the complexity. It suggests that the world is so terrifyingly intricate that only a document this heavy can possibly anchor us. It’s a weight we carry so we don’t have to run.

The Rearview Mirror Disguised as a Windshield

Luca D.R. once observed a group of executives during a ‘Strategy Retreat.’ He told me they spent 46% of their time talking about things that had already happened, 46% of their time talking about things that would never happen, and the remaining 8% of the time deciding where to go for dinner. This is the secret of the strategy document. It is a rearview mirror disguised as a windshield. We document our past successes and rebrand them as future goals. We take our current failures and rephrase them as ‘Opportunities for Growth.’ We are linguistic alchemists, turning leaden reality into the gold of ‘Strategic Alignment.’

[We are hiding in the syllables.]

The Nonsensical Scatter Plot

I have a confession to make. I once wrote a strategy document that was 56 pages long. I included a chart on page 46 that was intentionally nonsensical. It was a 3D scatter plot with four axes-an impossibility in our dimension. I labeled the axes ‘Emotional Resonance,’ ‘Market Velocity,’ ‘Granular Scalability,’ and ‘Temporal Flux.’ I waited for someone to call me out. I waited for a single person to say, ‘Hey, this chart literally makes no sense and defies the laws of physics.’ It stayed in the deck through 6 rounds of revisions. It was signed off by three Vice Presidents. In the final meeting, a Senior Director pointed at the nonsensical chart and said, ‘This is exactly the kind of deep data-driven insight we need.’ That was the day I realized we weren’t reading. We were just looking for the shapes of authority.

This obsession with the artifact kills the momentum. By the time the ‘vFINAL’ is approved, the market has already moved 16 steps ahead. The ‘Strategic Vision’ is a snapshot of a world that ceased to exist three months ago. We are steering the ship by looking at a photograph of the ocean taken last Tuesday.

Alignment and Sandpaper

There is a specific kind of exhaustion that comes from being ‘aligned.’ Alignment is often just the process of sanding down everyone’s edges until we are all perfectly round and can roll in any direction without actually going anywhere. The strategy document is the sandpaper. It removes the friction of dissent.

If you disagree with slide 76, you’re not ‘being a team player.’ You’re ‘stalling the process.’ So you sign off. You add your digital initials to the PDF, and you feel that tiny, sharp prick of betrayal in your chest. You know the plan is flawed, but the ritual requires your participation. You are now part of the herd, as Luca D.R. would say, moving toward the cliff in a very organized fashion.

The Subfloor of Reality

Maybe the answer is to stop writing and start renovating. If we treated our business strategies like a bathroom remodel, we’d be forced to deal with the subfloor. We’d have to acknowledge the rot before we put down the marble. We’d have to prioritize the things that actually matter-the water pressure, the drainage, the structural integrity-rather than the ‘Philosophical Aura of the Vanity Unit.’ But that requires getting our hands dirty. It requires the possibility of a mistake that can’t be fixed by ‘Adjusting the Narrative.’

I look back at my orange peel. It’s starting to dry out now, curling in on itself. It’s honest. It’s a discard. The strategy document is a discard too, but we refuse to throw it away. We file it. We reference it in emails (‘As per our FY25 Vision…’). We treat it like a holy text that we’ve forgotten how to read.

The Fiction We Approve

Tomorrow, I will get another email. It will likely be ‘FY25 Strategic Vision_vFINAL_REVISED_FINAL.pptx.’ I will open it. I will scroll to slide 6. I will see the same charts, the same buzzwords, the same desperate attempt to make sense of the chaos. And I will probably click ‘Approve.’ Because in the end, it’s easier to sign off on a fiction than it is to live in the truth of the unknown. We are all just peeling oranges in the dark, hoping that if we make the spiral perfect enough, the world will finally make sense.