 Metaphors are powerful. We used to see the universe, our societies, companies, and even our bodies as machines. The machine metaphor affected everything from how we build economies to how we treat a disease. It affects how leaders see their organizations, a hierarchical system for turning inputs into outputs, an assembly line where the plan, the strategy, the idea is handed down, and the conveyor belt churns out the desired result. While that may have been a fine machine for making cars, in a world where disruption can appear with no warning, it doesn't sound like a metaphor for success. But what if we changed the metaphor? What if we moved from a rigid, mechanistic view to a more fluid, dynamic metaphor? We could see an organization not as a machine, but as an integrated system, a complex web that may seem chaotic from the outside, but contains within it the means to respond and adapt to change. The system is not walled off, but it is connected, adapting and responding to every system around it. A system that can repair itself when disrupted, a system that gets stronger, that evolves. Research has shown us that the best teams are those that are adaptive, while still being focused on a common, greater goal. Teams that contain chaos to discover something amazing. Just like every cell in our body contains the same set of genetic instructions, so must a successful strategy permeate the entire organization. Strategic design and delivery are the intertwined parts of those instructions, not disconnected steps. Metaphors matter. Organizations aren't machines, they are collections of people. Leaders should move beyond seeing their job as simply setting gears into motion. Instead, they should focus on balancing the health of the overall system, on adapting to changes along the way, and on connecting strategy design and delivery.