Strategic clarity: the first tool in our leadership toolkit

Gemma and I are two episodes into series six of The Strategic Leader now, and we've picked our first tool for the strategic toolkit we're building together. It's the ability to communicate strategically with clarity, whether that's in a casual conversation, a presentation, a one page summary or a formal document. In my view, if you can't communicate your thinking clearly, it's genuinely hard for anyone else to know that you've done the thinking at all.

What we actually mean by a strategic summary

I want to be really clear about what this isn't. It's not a recap of everything that's happened. It's not a look at me, I've been so busy, I've done so much work. It isn't a status update. It's a selective synthesis that guides people towards what they need to know, what they need to decide, or what they need to do next.

To get that synthesis right, there are two things I always think about first. The first is audience. Am I talking to someone who's cornered me in the lift, updating my own team, or writing a paper for a steering committee? The second is purpose. Do I need this person to pass information on, to sign off on something, or to go and sell the idea to their own boss? Once you're clear on who you're talking to and what you actually need from them, the summary starts to shape itself.

Signposting: how to stop a conversation going in circles

Gemma shared a great real example from her coaching work with a COO on a project about linking pay to performance. The conversation kept circling the same handful of questions without landing on any decisions. So in a later call, she signposted it directly: here are the five key questions we agreed we needed to answer, and here's where we are on each one. Walking through them one at a time, in order, got the conversation unstuck.

What I love about that story is what it demonstrates. Being able to say there are five things we need to answer here, let's tackle them in order, shows you've got a grip on the whole conversation, on the opinions in the room, on the time, and on where you're actually trying to get to. That's strategic thinking in action, in the middle of a genuinely tricky discussion.

What, so what, now what

This is one of our favourites, and it actually goes right back to episode one of series one, so if you want more depth on it, that's the place to go. The what is simply the context: what are we talking about. The so what is the bit people skip over far too often: why does this actually matter, why should anyone care. The now what is the direction: what happens next.

I find this brilliant for shaping my thinking before I present something verbally, especially when I know the audience might not immediately see why something matters to them. Giving the so what its own moment, rather than rushing straight from what to now what, changes how well people engage with what you're asking of them.

The five questions method

For anything I'm writing up as a document or a one pager, I use a simple set of five questions as my starting point. Where are we now? Why is change needed? What are the realistic options? What happens if we do nothing? And what support or decision do we actually need? I tend to leave them as questions rather than dressing them up in strategic language, because that's genuinely how people think and talk. It also works really well as a prompt for AI if you want help drafting a first pass, since you're essentially asking it to think about your audience and anticipate what they'll want to know.

Headline down, not detail up

The other approach we talked through is starting with the headline rather than building up to it. So the headline on this project is that we're broadly on track. Then, if needed, three supporting points. Then, only if they ask, the detail behind those points. People remember the beginning and the end of what you tell them far more than the middle, so leading with your one line message, and circling back to it at the close, does a huge amount of work. It also means you're doing the thinking for your audience rather than making them sit through everything and work out the conclusion themselves.

Why it's harder than it sounds

Gemma made a lovely point about not making your audience work hard, and I think that's exactly why this is genuinely difficult to do well. It means leaving out the things you might want to say, look how hard I've worked, look how many problems I've solved, and just keeping what they need. It reminds me of my old advertising days, when we'd spend weeks building beautifully clever, sophisticated slide decks for a pitch, only to cut half of them at the eleventh hour. You still have to do all that thinking. You just can't let it stay in the final version.

Worth a listen if...

You've ever sat in a meeting that kept circling the same questions without ever quite landing a decision.

You want a few practical models, what so what now what, the five questions, headline down, that you can actually use in your next presentation or update.

You're trying to get better at cutting the detail out of your updates and getting straight to what your audience actually needs to hear.

Fi Craig is the founder of GoodThinking, a Bristol-based team and executive coaching practice working with senior leaders and their teams across the UK and internationally. The Strategic Leader podcast is co-presented with Gemma Bullivant.