“Why the best strategies live in conversations, not in PowerPoint folders” 

Over the years, I’ve been handed and examined many documents called “Strategy” on their cover. Some were thick enough to serve as ballast. Others came adorned with infographics, colour-coded matrices, or phrases like “visionary roadmap to stakeholder synergy.” But despite the polish, most of these documents shared one fatal flaw: they were unread, unspoken, and unlived.

Strategy, if it is to shape real decisions and behaviour, must be conversational—not just conceptual.

Across three decades and over 30 countries of project facilitation, I’ve seen one truth hold: the organisations that thrive are not the ones with the slickest strategy decks. They are the ones where everyone can talk about the strategy—even when the CEO isn’t in the room.

In systems thinking, feedback loops are essential to adaptive performance. Yet many corporate strategies are built like monoliths—static, sealed, and removed from the operational ecosystem. Leaders might “cascade” them downward via emails or briefings, but that’s transmission, not interaction. A strategy that can’t be debated is a strategy that is not alive. It is dead, but not buried yet.

Strategy is not a noun. It’s more like a verb. It lives in the decisions we make, the trade-offs we accept, the priorities we signal. In any case, I prefer “Strategic Intent” .

In one technology deployment I supported in the UAE, the CTO insisted on holding monthly “strategy flash sessions”—15-minute agenda-free team discussions where anyone could raise a strategic tension, ask for clarification, or challenge a current assumption.

The effect was remarkable. The strategy became a shared story—not a secret memo. It gained resilience because it was stress-tested continuously. And when the market shifted, the team didn’t wait for the next executive retreat—they adjusted, because they knew the intent.

Smart Questions to think about:

Prompt 1: If your organisation’s current strategic priorities had to survive without being written down—relayed only through conversations—what would people actually say? Would their understanding be practically enhanced?

Prompt 2: What would change if your leadership goal shifted from communicating strategy to building strategic fluency at every level? Who should be the facilitator of such a discussion?