Presenting a New Strategy to the Board—and Winning Their Buy-In

You and your team have worked hard on a new strategy and you’re ready to present it to the board. You’ve done your homework, talking with directors one on one to gather suggestions and identify concerns. Now you want to have a robust and thoughtful discussion, but you ultimately need to get to their support to move forward. When you’re launching a transformative new strategy, your board can be a powerful ally—or your biggest obstacle. A board that is tentative or paralyzed by scrutiny can stop a strategy process in its tracks. And in today’s volatile environment, anxiety over short-term survival can bring risk mitigation and conservative thinking to the fore. Here’s how to navigate the room to ensure you get your board’s buy-in. Recommendations Present the challenges that your strategy addresses first. Most strategy sessions start with a description of the proposed solution, but this is the biggest mistake presenters can make, according to CEO adviser Daniel Casse. Instead, once you’ve given a very brief top-line overview of what you’re presenting, begin by aligning the room on the biggest problems you’re facing. Starting with the challenges offers a number of advantages: It gives the group a shared understanding of the challenges—macro forces, industry trends, customer shifts, competitive dynamics, and so on—regardless of their level of expertise with the company or industry. It gets board members to tune in; they become eager to hear the solution. It builds trust, demonstrating that your proposed strategy is rooted in real challenges rather than just a whim. It gives the board the context they need to determine whether a shift is really needed, and whether the proposed strategy meets that need. Don’t just lay out financial projections. A financial impact statement is certainly an important part of your presentation. Board members need to know the expected outcomes of the shift in terms of revenue, cost, and profit. But too many CEOs focus on the numerical projections associated with a strategy instead of the logic of the strategy itself. The numbers should support the larger narrative of your strategy shift—not the other way around. In your presentation, describe: Your current and future value proposition, differentiation in the marketplace, and customer mix. Demonstrate why and how each of these will change. (This has the added benefit of bringing board members less familiar with your firm up to speed.) The steps you’ll take to move toward the strategy this year. Show how you’ll reallocate resources, change the configuration of the organization, or refigure your approach to talent. Use data to back up these points—but sparingly. Too many data points can suggest a lack of critical thinking. If you have more to share, it can go in the appendix of your deck. Acknowledge known concerns. No board will approve a strategy without a thorough discussion of the risks, yet even seasoned presenters shy away from addressing challenges to their own argument. (Maybe nobody will bring them up!) But acknowledging concerns—especially critical issues that have been raised by board members—builds trust and credibility by showing that you’re attuned to your audience and that you’re clear-eyed about the situation. As you prepare for the meeting in which you’ll present your strategy, work with the board chair (or lead independent director) to identify the most critical concerns based on the discussions you’ve had with board directors. Then, as you introduce your recommended strategy, call them out—without slowing down the momentum of your presentation. You can say something like: I’m going to share something new, and I expect some of you will be really excited about it. Some of you may be concerned—why are we focusing on expanding into a new customer segment before shoring up our offerings for our core? I know some of you also have reservations about the timing of all this work. In this presentation we will get into these questions and address all of these concerns. Share the solutions you’ve rejected. Don’t just lay out the strategic solution you’re proposing; show the other solutions you considered and explain why you chose the one you did. Being transparent about the logic behind your final recommendation builds trust and confidence that you chose the right direction. And it can stave off the possibility that the board will delay until you address a particular alternative. At the same time, you don’t want to go deep into the details of each alternative, or you’ll derail the conversation. Mention them briefly in the course of discussing your reasoning, and then include more detailed slides in an appendix so they’re available if needed. Steer the discussion to avoid rabbit holes. If you simply ask, “Any questions?” at the end of your presentation, the conversation can quickly get sidetracked by less-important issues or even pontificating. Asking your own direct, narrow questions of the board can get you the input you need while keeping the conversation on track. It also shows that you know you don’t have all the answers, making it clear that you’re after the best solutions, not just pushing your recommended approach. Identify the questions you want to ask and put those on your final slide. These could be, for example: Do we have the right workforce for this strategy, and if not, should we recruit externally, hire contractors, or develop skills within the organization? Is our pace realistic? Are we going too fast? Too slow? If you do get derailed or if a board director monologues or lectures, it’s up to you and the board chair to bring the discussion back to the topic at hand. Step in early and say something like, “This is important, but I don’t want to lose focus on our current conversation. Let’s set up a time after the meeting where we can bring the right group together to pursue this.” Lean into tough questions. If you get a challenging question, dig deeper instead of confronting it head on. Let’s say a board director asks, “How can we trust that attracting this new customer segment will work when similar efforts in the past have ended in failure?” Begin by paraphrasing the question: “You’re concerned that we won’t be able to reach this group because the pilot project to bring them on board a few years ago didn’t do as well as we had hoped.” Then ask for more: “Is there anything else here that gives you concern?” Counterintuitive as this move is, it can help shift the dynamic by validating the person’s concerns, especially if you are able to empathize with them: “If reaching these new customers is your main concern, I could see why you are worried.” Also bring others into the conversation: “I do have a point of view here, but does anyone else want to respond?” There is a risk that others will pile on, but there’s also a chance that someone will agree with you and introduce your argument for you, leading to a more balanced conversation. And if you’re left to respond the board member’s challenging question, answer it, don’t refute it. It can help to reframe the conversation: “I can see why you’re asking about that. Let’s step back and we can share why we think the context is very different than it was for the pilot project—and how we can leverage what we learned to ensure that this new effort is more successful.” This advice only works if it’s implemented authentically, though: A hollow “that’s a great question” with an overly rehearsed response will buy you less trust than a heartfelt “we’re going to need to look into that and come back to you,” which shows a willingness to listen and evolve. . . . While it’s common to have a robust—and maybe even contentious—strategy session with your board, you shouldn’t have to fight to get buy-in at every meeting. If this is the case, work with your board over the longer term to develop the muscle of talking about strategy together. Devote more of your regular sessions to discussing strategy than updates. Review your board composition and whether you need to bring on directors who are more active in your industry or attuned to strategy. Finally, consider whether there is something off base about your proposals themselves—are your board members right to push back? Your ultimate goal is to make strategy-setting with your board less about selling to a skeptical audience and more about earning their confidence and endorsement through a shared process. Go Deeper The Board’s Role in Strategy By Roger L. Martin HBR.org, December 28, 2018 (6-minute read) 3 Ways to Nail Your Presentation to the Board By Daniel Casse HBR.org, June 29, 2023 (12-minute read) Credits Expert advice courtesy of Daniel Casse (president and managing partner, High Lantern Group), Ram Charan (executive and board adviser and former professor, Harvard Business School), Dorlisa K. Flur (corporate director, SpartanNash, Sally Beauty Holdings, United States Cold Storage, and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina), Sam Garg (associate professor of management, ESSEC Business School), Chuck Gray (partner and co-head of U.S. CEO and board practice, Egon Zehnder); Sabina Nawaz (CEO coach and author, You’re The Boss: Become the Manager You Want to Be (and Others Need)), David Sable (Vice Chairman, Stagwell, and board member, American Eagle Outfitters, Ethan Allen Global, and the Special Olympics).

Presenting a New Strategy to the Board—and Winning Their Buy-In

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