The gossip was that Jack had decided long-term strategic thinking was not important. Cote decided to ask Jack about that. For some reason, like John Flannery, he was fearless in questioning the imperial CEO in a roomful of corporate types. Jack’s answer impressed him. “Strategic planning is critically important to a business,” Jack replied. “But the business leader has to own it, and what’s happened is they’ve just all delegated responsibility to a group of people who were in the strategic planning function, who work on making prettier and prettier charts to just impress all the other
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