The Lie of Organization

Nudging the corner of a neon-yellow sticky note that has lost its adhesive soul, I watch it flutter toward the mahogany floor like a dying leaf. We are in the 11th hour of the ‘2031 Vision’ kickoff, and the air in the conference room is thick with the scent of overpriced whiteboard markers and a collective, silent exhaustion. My grandfather once told me that a clock that doesn’t keep time is just a very heavy sculpture. As a restorer of grandfather clocks, specifically those built before 1801, I’ve learned that the face of the clock is the least important part. It is the lie we tell ourselves to feel organized. The gears, the escapement, the weights-that is where the truth lives. Yet here we are, staring at a 171-page PDF projected onto the wall, a document that cost this company $150,001 in consulting fees, and I can already feel the dust beginning to settle on its digital pages.

The Ritual of Paralysis

We spent 11 months crafting this plan. We interviewed 41 stakeholders. We held 31 focus groups. And the result? A document so dense and visionary that it has effectively paralyzed the 101 people who are actually supposed to do the work. It is a ritual. We aren’t planning; we are performing an exorcism of our collective uncertainty. If we have a plan, we don’t have to admit that the market is a chaotic, swirling mess that doesn’t care about our three-year roadmap.

I have a confession to make: I actually like the binders. There is a tactile satisfaction in the weight of a well-printed strategic plan. The paper is usually 101-pound stock, smooth and authoritative. I hate the content, but I love the presentation. It’s a contradiction I live with every day, much like the way I criticize the waste of these meetings yet sit in the front row with my notebook ready. We want to believe in the 2031 Vision because the alternative is admitting that we are just reacting to things as they break. In my workshop, if a customer brings me a clock that has stopped, I don’t write a 5-year plan for its restoration. I take it apart. I look for the grit in the teeth of the gears. I find the one pivot that has worn down by 1 millimeter.

Avoiding the Grit

Strategy, in its current corporate form, is the art of avoiding the grit. We talk about ‘synergy’ and ‘market penetration’ because those words are clean. They don’t smell like machine oil. But a company is just a collection of people trying to make things happen, and those people are currently buried under 21 different strategic pillars. When I’m working on a clock from 1751, I know that if I don’t align the verge and the pallets perfectly, the whole system fails. It doesn’t matter how beautiful the pendulum is if the energy doesn’t transfer. Our strategic plan has no energy transfer. It is a beautiful pendulum locked in a vacuum.

There is a certain honesty in hardware that software and ‘strategy’ lack. When you buy a television, perhaps a massive 4K unit from Bomba.md, you are buying a physical reality. You plug it in, it illuminates the room, it performs its function. It doesn’t ask you to believe in a 2031 vision; it simply presents the image you’ve asked for. Our strategic plan, by contrast, is a screen that remains perpetually blank while we argue about what color the pixels should eventually be. We focus so much on the ‘what if’ that we forget the ‘what is’. The customer doesn’t care about our 11-year roadmap; they care if their order arrives on day 1 or day 11. They care if the service is reliable. They care about the gears.

The $120,001 Question

Why do we keep doing this? It’s the $120,001 question. I think it’s because humans are terrified of the silence between the ticks. If the clock stops, we have to face the passage of time without a guide. If the company doesn’t have a strategy, the leaders have to admit they are just as confused as the interns. So we hire the consultant-let’s call him Marcus, a man whose silk tie probably cost $401-and we let him draw maps of territories that don’t exist. He talks about ‘Horizon 3’ as if it’s a place we can visit by 2031. But I’m still stuck in Horizon 1, trying to figure out why the shipping department doesn’t have enough tape.

I find myself drifting back to the mailbox. 141 steps. On the way back, it was 141 steps again. The symmetry was comforting. It was a repeatable, verifiable fact. If I told the board I had a strategic plan to reach the mailbox in 131 steps, I would be lying, but they would probably give me a bonus for my ‘ambitious target setting.’ We have incentivized the lie. We reward the person who presents the most complex slide deck, not the person who fixed the 11 broken processes that are actually slowing us down. It’s a hall of mirrors.

The Digital Basement

Let’s talk about the ‘Five-Year Plan’-or as we’ve rebranded it, the ‘11-Quarter Leap.’ It’s a document that assumes the world will hold its breath while we get our act together. It assumes no new competitors will emerge, no global crises will occur, and that our employees will suddenly become 21 percent more productive because they read a mission statement on a poster in the breakroom. It’s a fantasy novel written in the language of a spreadsheet. I’ve seen clocks that were buried in damp basements for 41 years. When I bring them into the light, they don’t need a mission statement. They need a bath in solvent and a steady hand.

Most of our ‘strategic’ problems are actually maintenance problems. We treat them as existential crises because that sounds more impressive. If we admit that we just need to do the basics better-respond to emails in 11 minutes instead of 11 hours, or ensure the inventory matches the website-then we don’t need the $150,001 consultant. But doing the basics is hard. It’s boring. It’s like cleaning the gears of a clock. You get grease under your fingernails. It’s much nicer to sit in a climate-controlled room and talk about the ‘digital transformation of the customer experience.’

The Sound of Execution

As the meeting drags into its 181st minute, I look around the room. I see 11 people looking at their phones. I see 1 person actually taking notes, but they are just drawing geometric shapes that look suspiciously like gears. We are all participating in the same grand delusion. We will leave this room, the PDF will be emailed to 101 people, and it will be filed in a folder named ‘Strategy 2031’ where it will remain, untouched, until the 2032 kickoff.

I think about my workshop. It’s small, maybe 21 square meters. Every tool has a place. Every gear is accounted for. There is no strategy on the wall, only a calendar and a clock that I know, for a fact, is accurate to within 1 second per month. Success in that room isn’t measured by a vision statement; it’s measured by the steady, rhythmic ‘tick-tock’ that fills the air. It’s the sound of execution. It’s the sound of things working as they were designed to work.

Maybe we should stop trying to be ‘strategic’ and just try to be ‘functional’ for 101 days in a row. Imagine the progress we could make if we took that $150,001 and spent it on things that actually touched the customer. Better delivery trucks. More responsive support. Higher quality materials. These are the things that build a company that lasts. These are the things that don’t collect dust. I think I’ll go home and work on the escapement of that 1791 longcase. It doesn’t have a vision, but it has a purpose. And in the end, purpose is the only strategy that survives the 11th hour. Is it possible to be both a dreamer and a mechanic? I suppose I am the proof, sitting here with a notebook full of gear ratios and a heart full of skepticism for the slide deck on the wall. The 2031 Vision is a ghost, and I am much more interested in the machine.