It’s a common complaint among CEOs:
“My team isn’t strategic enough.”
“They’re too focused on the day-to-day.”
“I wish they’d step back and see the big picture.”
And often, they’re right—on the surface. Their teams do seem anchored to the ground, consumed by firefighting and operational detail, struggling to elevate the conversation. But if we scratch just a little deeper, we often find the real issue isn’t capacity. It’s access.
Because while the CEO may be flying at strategic altitude, the rest of the team is left circling the runway.
Why?
Because the leader is thinking alone.
If You’re Not Part of the Solution…
Let’s be fair—being at the top is demanding. It’s not just lonely; it’s relentless. You’re expected to carry vision, deliver results, manage crises, and keep everyone else steady while the terrain shifts beneath your feet. In that context, it’s understandable—even reasonable—to look for ways to move faster, with more clarity, more control, and fewer detours.
It’s also tempting to do the heavy thinking alone, refine your answers, and then come to the team with a clean, streamlined path forward. It can feel like you’re making things easier for them—helping them move quickly and stay focused.
But that impulse, though well-intentioned, can quietly become a barrier. Because what often looks like a team that “doesn’t think strategically” is, in fact, a team that’s been left out of the thinking process altogether.
The illusion of inclusion
Many CEOs believe they’ve “shared the strategy.” After all, the objectives are clear, the priorities are set, and maybe even a roadmap has been drafted. But what they’ve actually shared are conclusions—the decisions already made, the statements already refined, the frameworks already chosen. Maybe they held one-on-one chats. Maybe they invited feedback.
What they haven’t shared is the thinking behind those conclusions—the messy reflection, the uncomfortable debates, the dilemmas that were weighed, and the assumptions that were questioned. That space of ambiguity where strategy is born isn’t always opened up to the rest of the team
And so, without that context, teams are left with the surface of strategy—but not its substance. They’re expected to think strategically about something they weren’t invited to build strategically.
The result?
You get plans without perspective, initiatives without intention, and alignment without understanding.
The trap of leading with answers
In the frenzy of moving forward—faster and with intention—CEOs often deliver their guidelines in already well-structured frameworks, predefined templates, or neatly crafted messaging. These are tools designed to ensure clarity, but they often end up shutting down conversation.
What was meant to inspire becomes rigid. What was meant to offer direction becomes too abstract to act on. Strategic statements start to sound like slogans—easy to repeat, but hard to implement.
And when the team tries to push back or ask for clarity, many leaders instinctively withdraw. Not out of arrogance, but out of frustration: “We’ve already been over this. Why don’t they get it?”
But strategy is not absorbed through instruction. It’s developed through shared reflection. If people don’t help build the logic, they won’t truly understand it. If they don’t struggle with the trade-offs, they won’t commit to the choices. If they’re not invited to elevate their thinking, they’ll stay exactly where you’ve left them.
This is how unintentional ceilings get built—not because the team can’t grow, but because leadership has unconsciously capped how far their thinking is allowed to go.
The Way Forward: Opening the Space for Shared Thinking
Strategy isn’t just a product. It’s a process. A conversation. A series of choices made under uncertainty, guided by shared principles and thoughtful debate.
When teams are brought into this process—not just to receive conclusions, but to contribute thinking—they begin to see the business differently. They develop the capacity to challenge each other constructively, to raise strategic dilemmas, to test assumptions before jumping into solutions.
That’s when the altitude rises. Not because the CEO pushes harder, but because the entire team is now climbing together.
You don’t need to lower your expectations or compromise your pace. But if you want your team to think and act strategically, you do need to make space for them to rise. That means being intentional about how, where, and with whom you build strategy.
Here are three shifts that can make all the difference:
- Identify the Right Reflection Spaces
Strategic conversations happen at different altitudes—corporate, business, functional, and cross-functional. Each level builds on the one above it, and each feeds the one below. What matters most is clarity: Who has agency over the issue? Who will own the outcome? Who can shape the decisions being made?
If a team is expected to act on the conclusions, they should take part in building them.
- Start with Questions, Not Answers
If you walk in with a fully defined solution, you shut down the conversation. Instead, bring the tension points, the unknowns, the hypotheses. Open up the space for reflection. Your role is to host the dialogue, not to dominate it.
Create sessions that begin with uncertainty, not clarity. Invite exploration. Let the logic unfold in the room. You’re not giving up control—you’re building collective intelligence.
Your team is more capable than you think—if you let them stretch.
- Make Strategic Mandates Crystal Clear
Ambitions can be inspiring, but they must also be concrete. Strategic definitions—goals and guidelines—can’t be open to interpretation. They need to show a clear playing field and the rules of the game.
For that, you need strategic mandates—those that set the parameters for decision-making: what needs to be achieved, how it should be pursued, and—just as importantly—what is off the table.
And you don’t need fancy frameworks to do this. You just need the right conversations—honest, practical, grounded discussions where alignment is built not on slogans, but on shared understanding.
When people are clear on the mandate, they move with confidence.
Leadership doesn’t mean holding all the answers. It means opening up the questions—not forever, not to everyone, and not without structure, but wisely and intentionally enough to develop the collective altitude your business needs to face what’s coming.
Because strategy isn’t strengthened by solitude.
It’s strengthened by shared reflection.
