Most strategies are communicated as a list: five pillars, three enablers, a set of KPIs, and a graphic that looks like a temple. Leaders present it, people nod, and six months later no one can recall more than one pillar.
The problem isn’t the strategy. It’s that a list doesn’t give anyone a reason to care.
The three-act structure for strategy
Every effective strategy narrative I’ve helped build follows a simple arc:
Where we’ve been. Honor what got the organization here. People need to know their past work mattered before they’ll accept that the future requires something different.
What’s changed. Name the shift — in customers, technology, competition, or the company itself — that makes the old approach insufficient. This is the tension that makes the story move.
Where we’re going, and why it’s worth it. Describe the destination in terms people can picture. Not “operational excellence,” but “a customer gets an answer in one call, not four.”
Then make it local
A strategy story only works when each person can complete the sentence: “For me, this means…” That translation can’t happen in the CEO’s town hall. It happens when managers sit with their teams and ask: what will we start, stop, and continue?
Give managers the story and the permission to adapt it. A rigid script spoken in a manager’s unnatural voice does more harm than a slightly imperfect version in their own words.
Test it with a hallway
Here’s my favorite test: after you’ve shared the strategy, ask five people from different levels to explain it in thirty seconds. If they can’t, you don’t have a communication problem yet — you have a clarity problem. Go back to the story and simplify until they can.