How to write a strategy memo that people actually use

Most strategy documents get filed. Here is what makes the difference.

Most strategy documents get filed within a month of being written. They are thorough, well-formatted, and completely ignored. The problem is usually not the content. It is the form. A strategy memo that gets used is a different kind of document than a strategy presentation.

Why presentations fail as strategy documents

A slide deck is designed to be shown, not read. It compresses reasoning into bullet points and relies on the presenter to fill in the logic. Once the presenter is gone, the deck loses most of its meaning. Someone reading it six months later cannot reconstruct why the choices were made.

A memo forces the writer to make the reasoning explicit. The argument has to hold up on its own, without a person in the room to explain it. That discipline is uncomfortable to write and extremely useful to read.

What a useful strategy memo contains

The memo should answer three questions: where are we now, where are we trying to go, and what are we choosing to do and not do to get there. Each of those sections should be short enough to read in ten minutes and specific enough to be argued with.

The 'where are we now' section is the one most organizations get wrong. It tends to be either too optimistic or too vague. The most useful version of this section is the one that says something the leadership team finds slightly uncomfortable to read.

• Current situation: honest, specific, no more than one page
• Direction: what you are trying to become in three years
• Choices: what you are doing and what you are not doing
• Assumptions: what would have to be true for this to work

Length and tone

A strategy memo should be readable in one sitting. Three to five pages is usually right. Longer than that it stops being a memo and starts being a report, which is a different thing with a different purpose.

The tone should be direct. Hedged language ('we might consider,' 'it could be worth exploring') signals that the writer is not sure of the argument. If you are not sure, say so explicitly and say what would change your mind.

The strategy memos produced through Cedar Cloud Rise engagements are written to be used in real conversations, not stored in a shared drive. If you want to see what that looks like in practice, the notes from the work section has more.