Sir John Browne of British Petroleum puts it simply: "Our strategy is our organization." Nokia executives are even more laconic: "Strategy = Structure = Implementation."

These sayings indicate a change in the way complex global firms discern their future. They no longer believe it can be precisely determined in advance, no matter how carefully a strategy is constructed. Instead, the future emerges from the complex and hard-to-predict interactions of leaders, followers, and the corporate setting. This change of view takes us from the simple dictum that "organization follows strategy" to a leadership model in which organizational design, the quality of team interactions, and the distribution of energy in the firm may be far more important determinants of success than the soundness of this or that strategy.

The new belief in the importance of organization is closely linked to changing attitudes toward markets. The 1980s were a period of unusual faith in markets as the ideal means for matching ideas, talent, and capital. Large corporations were described as sinks of torpor and waste; managers, unchecked, would dissipate resources on corporate jets and other unnecessary perquisites. The heroes of this story were the LBO artists, who punished the lazy and selfish...