The Hidden Half of Strategy: Why Great Strategies Create Little Value Until Others Understand Them

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A recent LinkedIn post by ​Jason Chudoba​, managing partner at ​ICR​, caught my attention.

Jason had just joined one of our ​Outthinker​ roundtables on strategy and investor relations, where he helped frame a conversation among chief strategy officers, investor relations leaders, transformation executives, private equity leaders, corporate development executives, and senior operators.

Afterward, he wrote on LinkedIn: “Chief Strategy Officers have more influence over the investor relations function than most realize.”

He went on to describe the CSO as uniquely positioned to ensure that the equity story reflects the actual strategy, that external metrics track the right leading indicators, and that the market’s understanding keeps pace with where the business is going.

That idea stayed with me.

Not because it was only about investor relations, but because it pointed to something larger.

What began as a conversation about IR quickly became a conversation about a larger strategic challenge:

How do companies translate strategy into belief?

Strategy Is Not Finished When the Decision Is Made

Most organizations treat strategy and communication as sequential activities.

First, leaders develop the strategy. Then they communicate it.

But what if that sequence is wrong?

What if communication is not something that happens after strategy, but part of strategy itself?

Strategy does not end when leaders choose a direction. It ends when the people who matter understand where the company is going and why.

One of the clearest ways to see this is in the gap between what a company is becoming and how the market still perceives it.

A company may be evolving from an industrial business into a technology platform, from a product company into a services company, or from a mature operator into a growth story.

But if the market still sees the old company, it will value the old company.

That is not only an investor relations problem.

That is a strategy problem.

The Translation Problem

As the discussion unfolded, global strategy leader ​Roopa Unnikrishnan​, who facilitated the session, reflected on a challenge many strategy leaders will recognize.

“We tend to think through the analytics,” she said. “We make sure it sits well internally. We figure out the internal communication strategy. And then we might dribble it through during our external IR presentations.”

That phrase, “dribble it through,” stayed with me.

It captures something I see repeatedly.

Leadership teams spend months building internal alignment around a strategic shift. They analyze the data. Build the business case. Align stakeholders. Create messaging. Drive change.

Yet external stakeholders are often treated as a separate audience altogether.

The assumption is that once the strategy is clear internally, the market will eventually understand it.

But transformation is not complete because employees understand it.

If investors, customers, partners, or board members continue evaluating the organization through an outdated lens, the transformation remains unfinished.

That is the work many organizations underestimate.

Investor Relations as a Listening Function

The conversation became even more interesting when ​Michael Drexler​, CSO at ​Brightstar Capital Partners​, shared a practice he used while previously leading strategy at a leading global financial company.

Periodically, he rotated members of his strategy team into investor relations.

At first, it sounded like a leadership development exercise.

It wasn’t.

His goal was to expose strategy leaders directly to investor thinking.

“The direct feedback on what the market thought about us,” he explained, often helped him develop better strategy.

That insight struck me.

Most strategy teams study customers.

Many study competitors.

Increasingly, they study emerging technologies and market trends.

But how many spend meaningful time studying the people whose capital enables the strategy?

Michael’s point was subtle but important.

Investor relations is often viewed as a communications function. But it can also be a listening function.

Investors Evaluate Strategic Logic

Another participant, ​Oreste Donzella​, a strategic advisor contributing to organizational growth and innovation, offered a perspective shaped by more than three decades in the semiconductor industry, including senior leadership roles spanning marketing, strategy, and global technology markets.

He described working closely with the CFO and investor relations team to build the company’s narrative.

“The story to the investor couldn’t be only the financial story,” he explained.

Investors wanted to understand the markets the company was pursuing, the customer problems it was solving, the roadmap it was building, and the opportunities it saw emerging over time.

That observation highlights an important shift.

Investors are not simply evaluating quarterly performance.

They are evaluating strategic logic.

The numbers matter. But increasingly, investors want to understand the assumptions behind those numbers:

• What markets are growing?
• What capabilities create differentiation?
• What trends create tailwinds?
• What choices position the company to win?

Those are strategy questions.

And they influence how the market values the business.

Metrics Shape Belief

The discussion then moved to a topic many leaders underestimate: metrics.

​Teerna Khurana,​ former head of global technology strategy of Paramount, shared an example from the media industry, a topic I have been studying for my next book. As ​Netflix​ grew, it changed the metrics it emphasized with investors: subscriber growth, engagement, revenue, profitability.

“They kind of set the standard,” she observed.

That comment contains a powerful lesson.

Metrics do not simply measure strategy. Metrics shape how strategy is understood.

If leaders fail to define the right measures of success, investors and stakeholders often create their own. And once the market begins judging a company through the wrong lens, regaining control of the narrative becomes difficult.

From Certainty to Clarity

As I listened to the discussion, I kept returning to a broader question: Why does this matter more now?

It matters because the pace of change keeps accelerating. Artificial intelligence is reshaping industries. Customer expectations are shifting. Business models are evolving. Competitive advantages are becoming increasingly transient.

In environments like these, leaders often feel pressure to provide certainty.

But certainty is rarely available.

The better approach is clarity.

Organizations may not know exactly where every technology or market shift will lead. But they can explain how they are evaluating opportunities, what logic sits behind their decisions, which signals they are watching, and what success should look like.

Jason’s original observation was that chief strategy officers have more influence over investor relations than most realize.

After listening to the discussion, I came away with a different conclusion: Chief strategy 0fficers have more influence over belief than most realize.

And belief may be one of the most underappreciated drivers of value.

A brilliant strategy that nobody understands creates little impact because strategy does not end when you choose a direction.

It ends when the people around you can see the future you are trying to build.

Create the clarity that helps investors see the future you’re building by joining ​Outthinker​ today.