Strategy is really not that hard. That may seem strange given the mountain of monographs, White Papers, and policy briefs generated over the years debating the direction the ship of state has headed, or as some charged in recent years, if we even had a ship left at all. Yet despite the deluge of discussions, consensus about what good strategy looks like remains elusive, and any reasonable measure of effectiveness of those efforts seems to indicate persistent and pervasive failure. Many fault poor implementation, a failure to go deep enough into “whole of government” with otherwise winning strategies. More damning are the criticisms that underlying strategic assumptions have failed to make sense of complex human values and interests. Still others lay the blame at the decision-makers themselves, or at the very least, their information gatekeepers who lacked strategic vision, narrowed instead by parochial myopia. As frequently as those critiques have come up in the past, what if instead the issue lies at a more fundamental level, and that once clarified, it could provide the guidance needed to make strategy possible in the first place?