Let me be blunt: the annual ritual of demanding a marketing plan from the CMO is a boardroom charade masquerading as strategy. The corner-office crowd think they’re extracting a roadmap—a neat, glossy prediction of what the company will do, spend, and achieve. They think they’re judging the plan. Wishful thinkers. The plan is a distraction, a fetish of the naive who believe the world bends to their spreadsheets. The real game, the actual signal amid...