Most strategy decks are exercises in describing the company, not deciding anything. Strip them down and there are really only two questions worth answering.
Question 1: What are we choosing not to do?
A strategy with no exclusions is a wishlist. Real strategy hurts: it cuts off entire categories of opportunity in exchange for a sharper bet on one.
If your strategy doc lists six initiatives, five priorities, four bets, you have no strategy. You have a backlog. Real strategy looks like one or two things and a long list of refusals.
- Six initiatives
- Five priorities
- Four bets
- No refusals
- One or two things
- A long list of refusals
- A competitor could predict your next two quarters
The test: read your strategy aloud to a competitor. If they couldn't predict, in advance, where you'll spend the next two quarters, you haven't been specific enough.
Question 2: What has to be true?
Behind every strategic bet are 3–5 load-bearing assumptions. If any of them are wrong, the bet doesn't work.
Most teams don't list them. They live as invisible beliefs, about pricing, channel, retention, the competitive set. So when the strategy fails, nobody can point to which assumption broke.
Make them explicit:
- "For this to work, our enterprise close rate has to clear 22%."
- "For this to work, content-led acquisition has to remain under £40 CAC."
- "For this to work, the platform shift to AI search will happen within 18 months."
Then measure them. The strategy review meeting becomes: which assumptions are still holding, which are wobbling, which broke?
That's the whole thing
Two questions. Most decks would be one slide each, and the work would be in actually living with the answers for a year. Almost no one does.