Your company conducts financial controls and operational procedures, with rigorous precision. But strategic knowledge? Not so much. Executives pour energy into polished slide decks, while completely missing the ‘three story types’ that actually transfer corporate strategy.
Picture your next C-suite transition. The departing leader hands over thick binders full of materials.
The incoming executive spends weeks reviewing documents, asking questions, and taking notes. But six months later, she is still struggling to make strategic decisions with the same conviction her predecessor had. Why?
Because polished strategic records don’t transfer strategy. But that’s not a documentation gap. That’s a leadership failure that’s fixable using three stories.
You document everything…except the battle scars
Let me show you what’s actually in those handoff binders. Your departing executive has documented everything: a comprehensive market analysis showing competitive threats by segment. Strategic positioning frameworks with differentiation matrices. Financial projections modelling three scenarios. Implementation timelines with milestone dependencies. Organisational charts depicting reporting structures. Even risk registers with mitigation plans.
What’s not documented?
The ‘origin story’. It’s the step-by-step journey from diagnosis to decision. How the strategic initiative actually started. Was it triggered by a near-miss with a competitor, a customer defection, or a board challenge?
What did the initial data gathering reveal that contradicted existing assumptions? That brutal three day offsite when finance and operations nearly came to blows over resource allocation. The VP who was initially the loudest sceptic but became the fiercest champion.
In other words, the messy, conflict-filled reality of how strategy actually gets made.
Most leadership teams think: “That’s the embarrassing part. That’s internal politics, not strategy. The new executive doesn’t need to know about the fights; just what we decided at the end.”
Wrong. That messy origin story? It’s not the embarrassing part to hide. Instead, it’s exactly what you must document with the same rigour as your financial projections.
Because here’s what actually happens: Incoming executives who read polished conclusions remain detached observers. They end up executing someone else’s strategy. By contrast, leaders who understand the battle scars become invested guardians who can defend and adapt the strategy under pressure. They see which assumptions died hard deaths, which stakeholders had to be convinced, and which data made the difference.
The messiness isn’t a bug. It’s the feature that transfers strategic conviction. Origin stories create ownership. Lacking them, your successor is following a map without understanding the terrain.
But an origin story alone isn’t enough…
Mental models transfer, analysis doesn’t
Your incoming executive also needs mental models for strategic direction.
Here’s the second failure. They provide exhaustive analysis instead of executable methods.
Let’s revisit that handoff binder. Your successor reviews all of it. She takes notes, asks clarifying questions, and still can’t make strategic decisions.
Here’s the alternative. Imagine a healthcare organisation facing strategic transformation. They could produce a comprehensive document as usual.
Or…
They could say: “We decided to become the Netflix of healthcare.”
That phrase delivers instant comprehension. Subscription relationships instead of transaction fees. Integrated digital experience instead of fragmented touchpoints. Platform thinking instead of service delivery. One sentence about the new pattern encodes what hundreds of pages cannot. Why?
The right ‘pattern stories’ convey mental models that stick. Analysis doesn’t.
Apply the same rigour to stories that you apply to numbers
The third element is the ‘diagnostic story’ that creates urgency by explaining why a corporate strategy was necessary.
Don’t say “Market conditions are evolving” or “We need to stay competitive.” Those generic statements don’t create urgency. They create compliance.
Real diagnostic stories sound like this: “When we analysed our position, we realised we were Blockbuster in 2005: dominant market share, strong brand recognition, profitable operations. And completely vulnerable. We were watching the Netflix equivalent in our industry grow 40 per cent annually while we defended a dying legacy model. We had maybe 18 months before our competitive position became unrecoverable.”
That’s a diagnostic story. It explains why inaction was existential, not just suboptimal.
Most executives can’t capture these stories effectively until they’ve seen dozens of examples. Only then will their brains recognise what makes strategic stories work.
Francis Wade is the author of Perfect Time Based Productivity, a keynote speaker and a management consultant. To search his prior columns on productivity, strategy, engagement and business processes, send email to columns@fwconsulting.com.
