Here the full quote from Baumard on Strategy from his book “Le Vide Stratégique” with a few more bits from later in the book.
His whole book can be considered a definition of strategy and an historical deconstruction of why strategy is so poorly understood and practiced nowadays.
We no longer try to define reality. We’ve resigned ourselves to endure it—or to subdue it, the way one numbs a persistent stomach ache with painkillers. In place of vision, we’ve installed an obsessive fixation on the efficiency of means. But strategy is not merely the efficient organization of resources to reach a goal.
True strategy is the capacity to define a reason for being—a purpose—that sustains and allows for the flourishing of what exists today, and what is yet to come.
And a bit later:
“The moment a system loses sight of its own purpose is also the moment it shifts direction—changing not just the path, but the very rules of the game.”