Sorry I dont have time to write a short, concise and coherent answer which will probably take hours. So I will write a long one :) But take this with a grain of salt. And may likely be controversial / unpopular opinion on HN, as it always has been in the past.

The article mentions it is not a vision statement or goal. Those are true in the example given. Your goal isn't MAU, revenue increase or time on app. Except this is such a low level vision that of course those are not right.

In an abstract division of Strategy and Execution, one can further divide Direction as higher level than Strategy, tactics before execution. So you have Direction > Strategy > Tactics > Execution. As you can see the middle part here is where the it is unclear. Most people only talk about Strategy and Execution, and I think we can, or should all agree if we had to put Direction and vision in the two, they will definitely belong to the Strategy part and not the Execution part.

Lets put an example. Tim Cook's Direction of Apple changed in 2014, in 2015 he announced Apple would be a Services Company, with the Strategy of Product as a Services and Doubling Services Revenue by 2020. That is a high level overview in case of iPhone sales stagnation. His job is to align the company as a whole in that direction.

Eddy Cue, in charge of Apple's Services will now have a direction of Doubling Services revenue, his strategy ( as it turns out ) was to bring in Apple TV+, Fitness from Apple Watch, and Apple Music. While pushing for additional increase in in every corner of Services Revenue. ( AppleCare, App Store etc )

Somewhere along the ling you will have managers, And their Direction will be to increase App Store revenue, Strategy will be to things like Apps Store Search Ads, tactics include forcing Sign up on Apps that were previously ignored or exempt etc etc.

At every level the word direction, strategy, tactics means different thing. And not everyone can have an high level overview.

The one thing I learned in twenty plus odd years in society, is that vision and direction is a very rare thing. Most people are very much lost in life. To the point I will say it is a natural born talent. You could give them all the same information. The same "Map". Some could only focus on the middle part, some could only read part of the map at one time. Some could read the whole map but still cant understand it. While some can see the faint hint of area beyond the map. Extrapolate information from and beyond the map. If you focus in a small part of the map, your Strategy will becomes what is listed in the article, MAU or revenue, short term interest. And the word strategy will change from where and how you view the map / situation.

Take a look at Intel, in terms of Strategic mistakes and execution failure in recent years. I commented on those in 2011 long before anyone thought Intel was doomed to fail. And now 98% of people think Intel is going to fail, I think Intel is going to succeed and be competitive within 4-5 years.

The reason why I hate the execution eats strategy for breakfast quote, is because the equation has always been success = Strategy x Execution. Execution has a large variables. It can be from 1 which is dysfunctional to a 100 like a start up. But execution will always be a positive integer. Strategy, despite the range of number may be less than 10, is the only thing in the equation that can have a negative number. You could execute perfectly at 100 but you will still be doomed to failure if your strategy has a negative number.

Some ( or nearly all )people tends disagree with this take. It was only in the past 3-4 years I found a rare video from Steve Jobs talking about execution and strategy when he retuned to Apple with the exact same take. People were saying Apple had execution problem in the 90s. When in fact they had a Strategy problem. And yet at the time no one see it as such.