Why Communication Is the Missing Link in Strategic Planning
According to Harvard Business Review (2024), 95% of employees do not understand their company’s strategy. This data shows that the problem lies not only in the formulation of strategy, but mainly in how it is communicated and translated into the reality of the teams.
In many organizations, strategic planning remains restricted to the board or leadership levels, without a structured effort to cascade clear, consistent messages adapted to different internal audiences. The result is a strategy that feels distant, poorly understood, and therefore difficult to execute.
Strategic communication should be seen as a bridge between intention and action. This involves more than occasional presentations: it requires consistent narratives, visual metrics, and follow-up rituals that keep the topic alive in day-to-day routines. Tools such as dashboards and simplified executive reports help reduce complexity and reinforce key messages. More than informing, it is necessary to engage, creating shared understanding and a collective sense of purpose.
Without this care, strategy runs the risk of becoming a beautiful but ineffective document. With well-structured communication, however, it turns into a practical guide capable of aligning efforts at all levels of the organization.
How to Connect Strategy, Tactics, and Operations: A Visual Guide for Leaders
What the Board Expects in a Strategic Planning Presentation
A board does not seek only information, but clarity in the strategic choices and the trade-offs the organization is willing to make. It is essential to highlight value indicators that show real impact on business results, instead of limiting the presentation to effort or activity metrics. Likewise, the board expects a transparent view of critical risks and their mitigation strategies, since decision-making requires awareness of possible obstacles. Finally, an essential point is the presentation of execution plans with well-defined accountability, making clear who will be responsible for each front and how progress will be monitored over time.
- Clarity in choices and trade-offs.
- Value indicators.
- Critical risks and a mitigation plan.
- Execution plans with accountability.
How to Structure a Strategic Planning Deck for the Board
An effective deck for the board must be objective but, at the same time, complete enough to provide a clear view of the strategic choices. The recommendation is that it should have between 15 and 20 pages, organized in a logical narrative that allows understanding not only of the plan but also of the reasoning behind it.
The starting point is a key message summarized in a single page, bringing the central purpose, the main strategic choices, the success metrics, and the most relevant risks. Next, it is important to include a narrative of alternatives, showing what was considered and discarded. This approach provides transparency to the process and increases the board’s confidence in the decisions made.
Next, the deck should present the strategy map and the Balanced Scorecard, synthesizing priorities across different perspectives, followed by the OKRs and the portfolio of initiatives that translate these priorities into concrete actions. To balance ambition and realism, it is also essential to detail the critical risks and mitigation plans, so that the board understands how the organization is preparing to deal with uncertainties.
Finally, the material needs to make the review plan clear, specifying monitoring cadences and re-planning mechanisms. This demonstrates execution discipline and ensures that strategic planning will not be static, but continuously adjusted as the context evolves.
How to Connect Strategy, Tactics, and Operations: A Visual Guide for Leaders
- Key message with purpose, choices, metrics and risks on 1 page.
- Narrative of alternatives with what was considered and discarded.
- Strategy map + BSC.
- OKRs and portfolio.
- Risks and mitigation.
- Review plan with cadences and re-planning.
How to Engage the Organization in Strategic Planning Beyond the Board
A common mistake is to treat strategic planning as a document exclusive to the board, when in practice its effectiveness depends on engaging the entire organization. To achieve this, it is essential to adapt the narrative to the audience’s level: while top leadership needs an integrated and comparative view of scenarios, operational teams require objective messages that show how their activities contribute to the final result.
Another critical point is to constantly reinforce the purpose and the “why” behind strategic choices. Without this context, goals risk appearing as distant orders, disconnected from employees’ daily reality. Narratives that explain not only what needs to be done, but mainly why and with what expected impact, are the ones that create a sense of belonging.
The use of clear visualizations, such as interactive dashboards, simplified strategy maps, and infographics, is also a powerful tool to translate complexity into clarity. These resources facilitate cross-organizational communication and reduce the risk of message distortion.
Finally, engagement depends on connecting collective goals to local routines. This means transforming large strategic objectives into tangible practices for each team, whether through operational indicators or follow-up rituals. When employees see how their daily routines influence strategic planning, strategy ceases to be abstract and becomes a practical guide for action.
- Adapt the narrative to the audience’s level.
- Reinforce the purpose and the “why” behind the choices.
- Use clear visualizations with dashboards, maps, and infographics.
- Connect collective goals to local routines.
Strategic Planning Only Exists When It Is Understood
The presentation to the board is only the starting point. Strategic planning cannot be sustained if it remains restricted to leadership. It only comes to life when it is understood, internalized, and practiced at all levels of the organization. This means turning objectives into clear messages, translating choices into visible priorities, and ensuring that each team understands how its daily deliverables connect to the company’s larger purpose.
In other words, the success of strategic planning does not depend only on its formulation, but on the organization’s ability to make it accessible, engaging, and applicable. When strategy is truly understood, it ceases to be a theoretical exercise and becomes an engine of execution and continuous learning.
How to Connect Strategy, Tactics, and Operations: A Visual Guide for Leaders
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