Seeing our bankers grilled by politicians for gross failure highlights a confusion we see much of – an implied assumption that great leadership is the same as great strategic management. Most telling for me was that of the 6 banking heads challenged by MPs in the UK, half had no significant industry experience! There is a big difference between knowing what’s best to do and inspiring others to do it – and being good at the second but useless at the first is a recipe for disaster. It’s about time we dropped the CEO-as-hero/heroine cult and valued properly the skill of strategic analysis. Fortune magazine seems the wp_ offender in promoting this cult, so next time you read gushing flattery of some leader, just pause to wonder if their organization is continuing to manage its strategy well.