Beyond the Game of Telephone: How CEOs Turn Strategy into Enterprise-Wide Execution

Remember the childhood game of telephone? Children sit in a circle, whispering a sentence from one to the next. By the time it reaches the last child, the original message has become something entirely different. Everyone laughs, and the game begins again.

Now imagine that same game within a company, only with much higher stakes.

The CEO and executive team develop a strategy. They share it with direct reports, who pass it to managers, who then communicate it to their teams. By the time it reaches the people responsible for executing it, the message may bear little resemblance to leadership’s intent.

Unlike the childhood game, no one is laughing.

Everyone may believe they’re communicating effectively. The CEO delivered the message. Executives reinforced it. Managers discussed it. Employees heard it. Yet the organization still lacks the clarity required to act.

For CEOs, the challenge is twofold: establish genuine enterprise-level clarity in the C-suite, then harness the power of peers to translate that clarity into coordinated action across the organization.

Enterprise thinking starts in the C-suite 

Consider an executive team that agrees that customer retention is its top strategic priority. The CFO focuses on margins, the COO on efficiency, the chief revenue officer on growth, and the chief human resources officer on workforce capacity. Each believes they’re supporting the strategy.

Yet their decisions may work at cross-purposes. Cost reductions undermine service quality. Sales commitments strain operations. Staffing constraints compromise the customer experience. Everyone is doing their job, but the enterprise isn’t moving forward as a whole.

This is the difference between functional excellence and enterprise-level thinking.

The CEO must ensure that executives understand not only the strategy but also its implications throughout the organization. This involves identifying interdependencies, confronting competing priorities, and making trade-offs that serve the enterprise rather than individual functions.

It also means clarifying who owns decisions, who should be consulted, who needs to be informed, and where colleagues must align. Above all, executives need to see themselves first as members of a single leadership team and second as functional leaders.

Without that mindset, the C-suite becomes the first link in the game of telephone, with each executive filtering the strategy through the lens of their own responsibilities.

Clarity is more than agreement 

A strategy presentation ends, and everyone nods, and the CEO assumes the team is aligned. But ask executives separately to explain the top priorities, the trade-offs, and what success looks like, and their answers may differ considerably.

That difference matters. Agreement on a slide isn’t the same as shared understanding.

One useful exercise is to ask executives to explain the strategy without referring to the presentation. How will their function contribute? What do they need from peers? What are they prepared to do differently? Where might functional goals conflict with enterprise priorities?

Differences among their answers offer an opportunity to surface assumptions and resolve contradictions before they spread across the organization.

The goal isn’t for everyone to recite the same words. It’s for leaders to understand the strategic intent well enough to make sound, consistent decisions when circumstances change or the answers aren’t obvious.

What CEOs can learn from commander’s intent 

The military has long recognized the limits of detailed instructions in unpredictable conditions. The concept of commander’s intent addresses that reality by conveying a mission’s purpose and desired end state, not merely a sequence of tasks.

When conditions change, people closer to the action can adapt their methods while staying true to the mission. They don’t have to wait for every decision to move up and down the chain of command.

The business parallel is powerful. A CEO can communicate what the organization must achieve and why it matters, while providing people with the clarity and appropriate authority to determine how best to contribute. This isn’t permission to pursue unrelated priorities. It’s a disciplined way to preserve alignment while enabling initiative.

For example, if the strategic intent is to improve customer retention by making the experience more responsive and reliable, employees should understand that purpose well enough to make sensible trade-offs when a customer’s needs don’t align with a standard process.

Commander’s intent also highlights a crucial distinction: consistency of purpose matters more than uniformity of wording. People don’t need to repeat the CEO’s message verbatim. They need to make decisions that advance its intent.

The limits of top-down communication 

Vertical communication remains essential. It sets direction, clarifies authority, and communicates priorities. But it is only half the equation.

Organizations execute strategy through people who depend on one another across functions and departments. Customer Service depends on Operations. Operations depends on Technology. Technology depends on Finance. Those relationships are horizontal, regardless of the organizational chart.

Yet companies often devote far more attention to cascading messages down the hierarchy than to strengthening understanding across it.

Think about how employees make sense of change. They compare interpretations with colleagues, ask questions, test assumptions, and explore what new expectations mean for their work. Those conversations happen whether leadership encourages them or not.

When peer relationships are strong, these exchanges clarify priorities, reveal dependencies, and reinforce commitments. When relationships are weak, confusion spreads, and functions retreat into silos.

The opportunity isn’t to control every conversation. It’s to make horizontal communication an intentional part of execution.

From strategic intent to collective action 

Imagine a company prioritizing faster customer response times. Rather than announcing a target and hoping it cascades accurately, leaders convene colleagues from Sales, Operations, Technology, and Customer Service.

They identify where delays occur, clarify ownership, discuss trade-offs, and agree on how to coordinate. Managers then engage their teams in discussing what the priority means for their work, while cross-functional peers continue to share feedback and address obstacles.

This requires psychological safety so people can question assumptions, a commitment to productivity so conversations yield results, and healthy accountability so colleagues honor their commitments to one another.

When an unexpected customer problem arises, employees can exercise judgment and coordinate across boundaries without waiting for a new directive. They understand both the desired outcome and the people they rely on to achieve it.

That’s the difference between communicating strategy and executing it. Clarity isn’t something leadership simply delivers. It’s something people develop, test, and reinforce together.

Five questions every CEO should ask 

1. Does our executive team make decisions for the enterprise, or do functional priorities prevail when interests compete?
2. Can our leaders explain the strategic intent, including the trade-offs it entails, without reading from a slide?
3. Do employees understand how their work connects to their peers’ responsibilities and to shared outcomes?
4. Have we created opportunities for colleagues across functions to clarify priorities, solve problems, and hold each other accountable?
5. What feedback tells us whether people are applying the strategy as intended, especially when conditions change?

These questions move the conversation beyond how often leaders communicate to how effectively the organization understands and acts on that communication.

More than a message 

CEOs invest considerable effort in strategy, talent, and systems. But even the best strategy will struggle if people lack a shared understanding or the relationships needed to execute it together.

Peer influence already shapes performance every day. Leaders can leave that influence to chance or intentionally turn it into an advantage. The aim is an organization where vertical direction and horizontal collaboration reinforce each other.

In the childhood game, success means repeating the original sentence exactly. In an enterprise, success means understanding the intent well enough to make sound decisions, adapt to changing conditions, and help colleagues achieve shared outcomes.

The answer isn’t to whisper louder or repeat the message more often. It’s to build an organization where clarity flows in every direction and becomes collective action.

A strategy isn’t truly understood just because everyone has heard it. It’s understood when everyone can act on it collectively.

Written by Leo Bottary.
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