Strategy Communication Tips
A brilliant business strategy has little impact if your people don’t understand it. Imagine if there were proven ways to communicate your strategy clearly — methods that help you avoid the most common pitfalls and ensure everyone knows what’s expected and why it matters.
What The Research Says about Strategy Communication
- Effective communication requires clarity. Organizational alignment research found that strategic clarity accounts for 31% of the difference between high and low performing companies in terms of revenue growth, profitability, leadership effectiveness, customer loyalty, and employee engagement.
- While communications certainly matter, surprising research by Gartner uncovered that what leaders say has only a 1% impact on employees. How work gets done on a daily basis has a much greater impact than what leaders say.
To motivate and align stakeholders, strategic clarity must be high, company communications must be consistent, and how work gets done must be aligned with strategic priorities. Otherwise, your message will not be heard.
The Responsibility of Leaders
It is up to company leaders to ruthlessly clarify and effectively articulate the organization’s business strategy across three areas:
- Where the company is going.
- Why that direction is important.
- The specific path to get there.
How to Measure Strategy Communication Effectiveness
You will know when your strategy has been effectively communicated when it is:
- Understood by all key stakeholders.
- Believed by those who must implement it.
- Actionable throughout the organization.
Five Strategy Communication Tips
For over three decades, we’ve worked with leaders who grasp the critical importance of translating business strategy from the C-suite to the front lines. Along the way, we’ve witnessed the successes, the missteps, and the outright failures — and we’ve seen how even the best-intentioned leaders can unintentionally fall short when communicating and cascading their strategic priorities.
Here are five practical strategy communication tips to help you avoid the common pitfalls and ensure your strategy resonates throughout your organization.
- Do Not Overcomplicate Your Strategic Plans
Now is not the time to dazzle with jargon or complex sentences. The clearest, most authentic communication wins. To truly rally your team, your strategy must be straightforward and easy to understand and commit to.
Focus on the few priorities that matter most. We often distill strategies onto a single page — clear, concise, and actionable. For practical examples, download our one-page Strategy Communication Maps.
- Do Not Dictate Your Strategy
A purely top-down approach rarely works in today’s flatter, faster-moving organizations. For a strategy to be understood, embraced, and executed, it must be shaped collaboratively — not crafted in an executive ivory tower and handed down.
Actively involve employees from different levels and functions to gather real-world input and build genuine ownership. When people help shape the strategy, they understand it better, believe in it more, and take responsibility for making it work.
Stakeholders who are actively engaged in the strategy design process naturally become advocates, helping reinforce and cascade the strategy across the organization.
- Do Not Assume Once is Enough When Communicating Strategic Priorities
You may roll out your new strategy at a company-wide town hall after your executive strategy retreat, but a single announcement—even a compelling one — won’t drive understanding or commitment. Strategy communication is not an event; it’s an ongoing process.
Your priorities must be reinforced over time, delivered through multiple channels, and openly discussed—not just broadcast. If you want real buy-in, shift from passive communication to active dialogue. Encourage questions, debate assumptions, and make the strategy part of everyday conversations, meetings, and decisions.
- Do Not Ignore More Up-to-Date Communication Tools
Use every effective channel available to reach your people when communicating strategic priorities. Strategy communication should extend far beyond email blasts and slide decks.
Leverage digital and social platforms to deliver messages in timely, attention-grabbing ways. Consider online simulations, challenges, or contests to bring the strategy to life while capturing real-time feedback. The more interactive and relevant the medium, the more likely the message will stick.
- Do Not Hold Back Resources
If your strategy isn’t clearly understood and genuinely believed across the organization, strategy execution will falter. Effective strategy communication requires real investment — it doesn’t happen by accident.
This is not the place to cut corners or save money. Allocate the time, tools, and funding needed to ensure employees truly understand the strategy. Only then can people align their decisions, act with confidence, and move forward at full speed.
The Bottom Line
Even the best strategy will fail if it’s poorly communicated. Apply these five strategy communication tips to build shared understanding, genuine commitment, and disciplined execution across your organization.
Want more strategy communication tips? Download Whitepaper – Is Your Strategy Really Clear Enough to Act?
Tristam Brown is an executive business consultant and organizational development expert with more than three decades of experience helping organizations accelerate performance, build high-impact teams, and turn strategy into execution. As CEO of LSA Global, he works with leaders to get and stay aligned™ through research-backed strategy, culture, and talent solutions that produce measurable, business-critical results. See full bio.
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