The hum of the projector is the only honest sound in the room. We’re on slide 47 of 93. A slide titled ‘Q3 Synergistic Activation Pathways.’ It’s a dense matrix of acronyms and arrows, a visual representation of a migraine. You can feel the oxygen thinning, replaced by the odorless gas of corporate consensus. The Senior VP, our guide on this journey to nowhere, points a laser at a box labeled ‘Cross-Functional Value Stream Integration.’ He says something about leverage. Everyone nods sagely. I nod too.
A Collective Lie
It’s a lie. A quiet, collective, room-temperature lie. I know for a fact that the person three seats down, the head of product, has a rogue team already building something that completely contradicts this chart. The person to my left, from finance, is about to cut the budget for the project this entire slide is based on. And me? I’m thinking about the 13 emails I need to answer before lunch. Nobody is buying this. Yet, everyone is nodding. This isn’t a meeting; it’s a ritual. It’s alignment theater.
I say all this with the fresh guilt of a hypocrite. I am part of the problem. Last week, I sent a 123-slide presentation to a client. I argued for its necessity, its thoroughness. I used words like ‘comprehensive’ and ‘foundational.’ I even won the argument, which is the worst part, because there’s a particular kind of shame that comes from successfully defending a position you know, deep down, is wrong. The deck was a masterpiece of defensive complexity. It had appendices. It had a glossary. It answered every conceivable question except the only one that mattered: What do we do now?
Drew R.’s Clarity
It reminds me of Drew R. He was a union negotiator I knew years ago, a man who looked like he was carved out of oak and institutional distrust. I saw him sit across from three corporate lawyers who had spent a fortune, probably $373,000 or more, on a proposal. They slid a binder across the table. It was 233 pages long, a monument to billable hours. Drew didn’t open it. He just pushed it back. From his worn leather briefcase, he pulled out a document that was 3 pages long, stapled in the corner. “Our terms are on page one,” he said, his voice quiet but carrying across the vast, polished table. “Pages two and three are for your notes.”
Pages (Weapon)
Pages (Trust)
There was a stunned silence. The lawyers looked at the binder, then at the 3 pages, as if they couldn’t compute the difference in mass. What Drew understood was that the 233-page document wasn’t a plan; it was a weapon. It was designed to exhaust, to confuse, to win by attrition. Its complexity was a shield. Drew’s 3-page response was the opposite. It was a statement of trust. Trust in his position, trust in his people’s needs, and a subtle, powerful demand that the other side operate with the same clarity.
Clarity is an act of courage.
The Fortress of Fear
Our strategy decks are our 233-page binders. We create them because we are afraid. Afraid of being wrong. Afraid of making a decision that might fail. Afraid of looking someone in the eye and saying, “I don’t know for sure, but this is what we must do.” A 93-slide deck provides plausible deniability for everyone. If the plan fails, it was because of a failure in ‘execution,’ not ‘strategy.’ The strategy was sound-look, it’s right there on slide 73, in the quadrant chart. The document becomes a scapegoat, a beautiful, intricate corpse we can all gather around and mourn.
I’ve been thinking about this because I fell into the trap myself. I once led a strategy initiative for a mid-sized tech company. We spent 3 months and $43,000 on market research, stakeholder interviews, and off-site workshops. The result was a magnificent 73-page deck. It had personas, user journeys, competitive analysis, and a 3-year roadmap that was color-coded by quarter. We presented it to the board. They applauded. They called it ‘impressive.’ Then they put it in a drawer. Six months later, a competitor ate our lunch because they had launched the one simple feature our entire deck was designed to philosophize about, not actually build. The plan was an anesthetic. It felt like progress while putting the entire organization to sleep.
Beyond the Paper Fortress
This endless documentation is a defense mechanism. It’s an attempt to build a fortress of certainty out of paper, to create a system so complete it eliminates the terrifying need for human judgment. The problem is, you can’t live in a paper fortress. True security comes from clarity, the kind of straightforward guidance you’d expect from skilled financial planner who have seen every trick in the book. One is a comforting illusion; the other is a map you can actually use to go somewhere. The root of the issue is a profound breakdown in organizational trust. When a team trusts its leaders and each other, the plan can be simple. It can be a sketch on a whiteboard, a 3-page memo, a direct conversation. Because the plan isn’t the document; the plan is the shared understanding in people’s heads.
Distrust
Complex docs, blame
Trust
Simple plans, shared understanding
The complex document is an admission that we don’t have that shared understanding. It’s an attempt to create a legalistic contract between departments who don’t trust each other. ‘Marketing will deliver 13 qualified leads per quarter as defined in appendix B, section 3.’ We write this down not to align, but to have something to point to when it all goes wrong. It’s pre-emptive blame assignment masquerading as strategy.
The Uncomfortable Truth
I often wonder what Drew R. would have made of our quarterly business reviews. He would probably listen for about 3 minutes, then ask a simple, devastating question like, “So, what are you actually going to do for the folks who get the work done?” He wasn’t interested in the performance of work; he was interested in the results. He knew that the more words you use, the less you are saying. His 3-page document wasn’t brief because it was simple; it was brief because it was powerful. It left no room for interpretation or evasion.
So why did I make that 123-slide deck last week? This is the uncomfortable part. I did it because I was also scared. It was a new client, and I wanted to prove my value. I wanted to show them I had done the work, that I was rigorous. My insecurity manifested as a PowerPoint file. It was easier to build a giant deck than to have the hard, simple conversation. The hard conversation sounds like: “Here are the 3 things that are broken. Fixing them will be painful. The first step is to stop doing X. Yes, I’m sure. No, I don’t have a 23-slide appendix to prove it. You hired me for my judgment, and this is it.”
That requires a level of trust that isn’t built on slide 1, but over months or years. Maybe the strategy deck isn’t the problem, but a symptom. It’s the scar tissue that grows over a wound of distrust. We think we’re building a plan, but what we’re really doing is building a case. A case for our budget, a case for our team, a case for our own continued employment.
Map or Tombstone?
The next time someone schedules a 3-hour meeting to walk through a 93-slide strategy deck, we should ask ourselves what we’re really trying to accomplish. Are we making a choice, or are we creating a beautiful artifact to prove that we tried? Are we building a map, or are we just admiring the quality of the paper it’s printed on? Drew R. carried his plan in his briefcase. Most companies bury theirs on a server, a digital tombstone for a decision that was never really made.
