“Nobody Understands Our Strategy”: How to Turn Corporate Strategy Into Something Employees Actually Care About

Or: congratulations on your 74-page strategy deck. Dave on the night shift still has no idea what any of it means.

Every organisation has a strategy. Some have several.

There’s the five-year strategy. The people strategy. The digital strategy. The customer strategy. The transformation strategy. And probably a sustainability strategy living in a PowerPoint somewhere called FINAL_Strategy_v18_USE_THIS_ONExxx.pptx.

Senior leaders have spent months creating it. There have been workshops. Away days. Post-it notes. Consultants. Possibly a hotel conference room with disappointing pastries. Eventually, the strategy is unveiled to the organisation with great fanfare. There’s a town hall. A glossy PDF. Maybe a video from the CEO.

Everyone nods. Everyone applauds.

And three weeks later, if you stopped a random employee in the corridor and asked: “So, what’s our strategy?” you’d probably get: “Erm… growth?”

And there lies the problem.

Having a strategy and having an organisation that understands the strategy are two very different things.

And if your employees don’t understand where the business is going, why it’s going there and what they personally need to do differently to help it get there, you haven’t really communicated a strategy. You’ve announced one.

There’s a difference.

The strategy understanding gap is very real

This isn’t simply an internal comms person being picky about wording. Research suggests strategic alignment remains a genuine organisational problem.

McKinsey has found that even in the healthiest organisations, around 25% of employees can still be unclear about their company’s direction. Its research argues that when employees are genuinely engaged with strategy, they understand it better, are more motivated to execute it and are better placed to identify opportunities and threats.

Gallup has found a similar disconnect around organisational identity. In its research, only 41% of employees strongly agreed that they knew what their company stood for and what differentiated it from competitors.

So, if your strategy currently feels beautifully clear in the boardroom but becomes increasingly foggy with every floor you descend... you're in good company.

Not good good company. But plenty of company.

Why strategies get lost in translation

The first problem is that strategies are usually created by people who have been thinking about them for months.

They know the context. They've seen the research. They understand why choices were made. They've debated the priorities.

Then they present the final answer to employees and assume everyone else will immediately make the same intellectual journey.

It's like showing somebody the final five minutes of The Godfather and wondering why they're not impressed.

Employees need the story that gets them there.

Where are we now?

What's changing around us?

Where are we trying to get to?

Why have we chosen this route?

What does success look like?

And, crucially: “What does this mean for me?”

That final question is where an awful lot of strategy communication falls apart.

Strategy has a jargon problem

There is another obstacle. Corporate strategy documents often aren't written for normal human consumption. They're written in a mysterious dialect we shall call Boardroom.

You may recognise it…

“We will leverage our differentiated capabilities to unlock sustainable value through customer-centric transformation.”

Fantastic.

What should Sarah in Customer Services do differently tomorrow?

Nobody knows. But presumably she'll leverage something.

McKinsey made this point particularly well when discussing what CEOs need from communicators: leaders may be comfortable talking about EBITDA and business models, but that language needs translating into what employees actually do “day-to-day, minute-to-minute.”

The important connection is strategy → value → what people should do differently.

That is the job. Not dumbing strategy down. Making it usable.

Employees aren't stupid. They just don't spend their working day thinking about your strategic pillars.

And nor should they.

Stop communicating the strategy. Start telling the story.

People understand stories. They understand problems, choices, consequences and destinations.

So rather than beginning with: “Our four strategic pillars for FY27–30 are…”, try beginning with the world your employees actually recognise.

What's happening to customers?

What's changing in the market?

What's becoming harder?

Where are the opportunities?

What happens if the organisation does nothing?

Then introduce the strategy as the answer.

Suddenly, instead of “HERE IS THE STRATEGY. PLEASE REMEMBER IT”, you have: “Here's the challenge we're facing. Here's what we've decided to do about it. And here's where you come in.”

Much better.

(And significantly less likely to induce PowerPoint-induced unconsciousness.)

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Give people something they can actually remember

Your employees should not require revision cards to remember the company strategy.

If there are nine strategic priorities, seven behaviours, six pillars, four values, three transformation programmes and a well-intentioned partridge in a pear tree, something has gone wrong.

Great strategy communication needs a simple central narrative.

McKinsey's work on organisational communication points to the power of rallying employees around a clear common purpose rather than bombarding them with everything at once. It cites DBS Bank's simple idea of “making banking joyful” as an example of a unifying theme that helped employees connect with organisational goals.

That doesn't mean reducing your entire corporate strategy to a motivational fridge magnet. It means creating a memorable spine that everything else hangs from.

If employees can't explain the basic direction of travel to somebody else, it's probably still too complicated.

The CEO cannot do this alone

Ah, the traditional strategy cascade.

CEO tells senior leaders. Senior leaders tell directors. Directors tell managers. Managers tell employees.

By the time it reaches the frontline, “We're entering two new international markets” has somehow become “Everyone needs to use less printer paper.”

The strategy cascade isn't necessarily a bad idea. The problem is assuming information simply flows perfectly down an organisation like water.

It doesn't. It mutates. It stalls. It gets interpreted. It gets deprioritised because somebody has three people off sick and a customer screaming at them.

Managers are therefore critical. They need more than the original slide deck and an instruction to “cascade this with your teams.”

Give them:

• the core narrative
• simple talking points
• FAQs and honest answers to difficult questions
• examples relevant to their part of the organisation
• visuals they can use
• short videos
• opportunities to ask questions before they're expected to answer everyone else's

And, importantly, help them connect the big organisational strategy to the work their team actually does.

McKinsey has reported that involving managers in communicating strategy can strengthen understanding, while employees may benefit from hearing strategy explained by their immediate supervisor rather than a distant senior leader.

Your managers aren't just another channel. They're translators. Equip them accordingly.

Video can make strategy feel human

Strategy communication is also an excellent example of where video earns its keep.

A strategy document explains. A good video can make people feel.

It can show customers, employees, products, workplaces, challenges, progress...

It can let leaders explain why decisions have been made in their own voice rather than sounding as though they've been kidnapped by Corporate Affairs.

But please resist the temptation to make one 17-minute strategy film and declare the job finished. Think smaller.

A strong strategy video campaign might include a short launch film establishing the story, followed by brief leader explainers, employee stories showing the strategy in action, customer examples, animations for complex ideas and bite-sized updates showing progress.

The objective isn't: “WATCH OUR STRATEGY VIDEO.”

It's: “Understand where we're going and recognise your part in getting us there.”

Video is the vehicle. Understanding is the destination.

One launch isn't a communication strategy

This is perhaps the biggest mistake of all.

Organisations spend months developing a strategy. And approximately twelve minutes communicating it.

There's a launch event, a CEO email, an intranet article. Maybe a video? Done! Back to business as usual.

Six months later: “Why aren't employees connecting with the strategy?”

Because humans forget things. Especially things competing with 97 emails, three Teams chats, a customer complaint and somebody asking whether they've completed their mandatory cyber-security training.

Strategy needs repetition. But repetition doesn't mean repeatedly emailing the same PDF until morale improves.

It means building a campaign. Launch it. Explain it. Bring individual priorities to life. Give managers material to discuss.

Show real examples. Celebrate employees delivering it. Tell customer stories. Report progress. Address setbacks. Keep connecting everyday decisions back to the bigger picture.

Strategy shouldn't be an event. It should become part of the organisational conversation.

Show people the strategy happening

One of the most powerful ways to make strategy meaningful is evidence.

Suppose one strategic priority is: “Put customers at the heart of everything we do.” Erm, that’s lovely. It's also the sort of phrase approximately 93% of organisations could have written.

What does it actually look like? Show us. Tell the story of the employee who spotted a terrible customer process and fixed it. Show the product change that came directly from customer feedback. Interview the team that redesigned a service. Explain a decision the company made specifically because of the strategy.

Now employees can see the difference between a slogan and a behaviour.

This is where internal campaigns, storytelling and video can turn an abstract strategy into something tangible.

Don't just tell people what the organisation believes. Show them what it looks like when somebody acts on it.

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And please let employees ask questions

Strategy communication cannot be entirely one-way. Employees will have questions. Some will be awkward.

Good! Questions like “If growth is the priority, why are we cutting budgets?” or “How does this affect my team?” or “Didn't we say something completely different two years ago?”

These aren't signs that communication has failed. They're signs people are thinking.

Create places for genuine discussion: manager conversations, Q&As, town halls, employee forums, intranet comments, listening sessions or anonymous questions.

And don't be afraid to say “We don't know yet.”

That's infinitely more credible than 400 words of corporate mist designed to disguise the fact that nobody knows yet.

Measure understanding, not just distribution

This one matters.

You sent the email to 5,000 people. Excellent. What did they understand?

Your video received 3,200 views. Lovely. What changed?

The intranet article had a 68% click-through rate. Wonderful. Can anybody explain the strategy?

Communication measurement often stops at reach because reach is easy to count. Strategy communication needs to go further.

Ask employees:

Can you explain our priorities?

Do you understand why we've chosen them?

Do you know how your role contributes?

Has your manager discussed the strategy with you?

Do you know what you're expected to do differently?

Gallup has previously reported that just 13% of employees strongly agreed that their organisation's leadership communicated effectively with the rest of the organisation, and argues that effective internal communication should be connected to the purpose behind the message rather than judged solely on the message itself.

Measure whether communication landed. Not whether it left the building.

This is where a comms health check can be surprisingly revealing

If you've communicated your strategy repeatedly and people still don't seem to understand it, resist the temptation to blame employees.

Before sending Email Number 14 with PLEASE READ – IMPORTANT in the subject line, look at the communication environment around it.

Are there too many channels?

Are leaders saying the same thing?

Do managers understand it themselves?

Is your tone of voice unnecessarily corporate?

Can frontline employees access the content?

Is the intranet helping people find answers or hiding them?

Are your campaigns joined up?

Do employees trust the channels you're using?

A comms health check can uncover the structural problems stopping strategic messages from landing.

Sometimes you don't have a strategy-communication problem. You have an entire communication-ecosystem problem that happens to become particularly visible when you try to communicate the strategy.

Which is less catchy. But considerably more useful to know.

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From strategy deck to strategy people can actually use

Ultimately, successful strategy communication requires several things working together.

A clear comms strategy decides what employees need to understand and how you'll build that understanding over time.

A strong tone of voice translates boardroom language into something recognisably human.

Thoughtful campaign planning keeps the strategy alive beyond launch day.

Good video production makes leaders, stories and complex ideas more accessible.

Strong manager communication connects organisational ambition with everyday work.

And effective employee listening tells you whether any of it is actually landing.

None of those things changes the business strategy. They make it possible for human beings to do something with it. And that's rather important.

The bottom line

Your strategy can be brilliant. It can be commercially astute. Innovative. Bold. Beautifully researched.

It can contain arrows, pillars, circles, pyramids and a diagram so sophisticated that nobody quite knows which way up it's supposed to go.

But if the people responsible for delivering it don't understand it... it's just a document.

The organisations that communicate strategy well don't simply announce where they're going.

They explain why.

They translate strategy into everyday language.

They equip managers.

They use stories.

They show progress.

They repeat themselves.

They listen.

And above all, they help every employee answer one very simple question: “What does this mean for me?”

Because the real test of a strategy isn't whether the board approves it. It's whether thousands of people across an organisation can make better decisions because they understand it.

And if your employees currently think your three-year strategic vision is something involving “growth, customers and probably some AI”...

You may have a little translating to do.

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