Every strategy asks a business to make choices about where it will invest its time, money, and attention. Which customers will it prioritize? Which capabilities will it build? Which opportunities will it choose not to pursue?

Those choices have consequences. They shape what people work on, how resources are allocated, and what the company believes will make it competitive. But agreeing on a direction isn’t necessarily the same as understanding why that direction makes sense.

I think a strategy should make that reasoning visible. Someone who wasn’t involved in developing it should be able to understand what the company learned, how it interpreted that information, and why it chose one course of action over another.

If you’re asking people to commit to a strategy, you should show them how you got there.

The Connection Is Part of the Work

Putting research findings at the beginning of a presentation and recommendations at the end doesn’t necessarily explain the relationship between them. You still have to show what you believe the findings mean and why that interpretation points toward a particular choice. The connection may be obvious to the people who did the work. It may be much less obvious to everyone else.

Imagine a company whose customers repeatedly describe the difficulty of coordinating several providers on a complicated project. They talk about managing handoffs, resolving conflicting information, and figuring out who is responsible when something goes wrong.

You could summarize that finding as “customers value service.” It wouldn’t be entirely wrong, but it would lose much of what makes the finding useful.

A more specific interpretation might be that these customers place a premium on reducing the work and uncertainty of managing the project. If the company can credibly take on that coordination, it might choose to prioritize complex projects where that capability matters most. It might also invest in project management rather than simply expanding the number of individual services it offers.

Now there’s a connection between what customers described and where the business might focus its resources. You can follow the reasoning, and you can question it.

In his essay “The Big Lie of Strategic Planning,” Roger Martin offers a useful instruction: “Make the logic explicit.” He argues that leaders should write down what they need to believe about their customers, competitors, and capabilities for their strategic choices to make sense. Doing so gives them a basis for comparing that logic with what actually happens and adjusting accordingly.

In our example, hearing that customers dislike coordinating providers doesn’t establish that they’ll choose your company to do it for them. You still need to understand whether that benefit will influence their buying decision, whether competitors already deliver it, and whether your company can provide it profitably.

The research informs the choice, but it doesn’t make the choice for you. There’s still judgment involved. Showing how you got there means explaining that judgment, including what supports it and what remains uncertain.

Beyond the Presentation

I think this matters for more than getting a strategy approved. Eventually, people who weren’t involved in developing it will have to put it to work.

A sales leader will need to decide which opportunities deserve the team’s attention. An operations leader will need to prioritize investments. A marketing director will need to determine which capabilities to emphasize and why they matter to the customer.

Understanding the reasoning gives each of those people something to use when the next decision doesn’t fit neatly into the plan. It also gives them a way to recognize when a customer need has changed or a capability isn’t developing as expected, and to bring that information back into the strategic conversation.

That doesn’t require preserving every interview quote or walking everyone through every turn the project took. The goal is to make the important connections clear enough that someone else can follow them, question them, and explain them in their own words. A concise strategy can do that. A long one can still fail to.

Ultimately, the work needs to remain useful after the presentation is over. A strategy should show people where you believe the business needs to go, and enough of how you got there that they can carry it forward without you in the room.