What to Do When Your Manager Doesn’t Have a Strategy

The playbook to coax it out of them

Years ago, I pulled five PMs into a conference room and, in an afternoon, we drafted what we thought was a solid product strategy for our team. We were all sick of trying to figure out our own strategy when it felt like leadership’s guidance was a shrug. Any strategy felt better than the current state of ambiguity and aimlessness.

I went to my manager with our output. “Look—we made you a strategy.” (Pro tip: telling your boss they don’t have a strategy is not a good career move.)

That moment taught me two things I use to this day: most leaders do have a strategy (it’s just not explicit), and the most effective way to help is to translate what you’re hearing into a draft they can quickly react to. The steps below are the system I wish I’d had then.

The impossibility of moving in a strategic vacuum

When I don’t know the goal, strategy, or context of organizational decisions, I get extremely frustrated. In that vacuum, teams step on each other’s toes, roadmaps collide, and people slow down their work, waiting for clarity that may never arrive.

Why the vacuum hurts:

• You can’t make trade‑offs. If everything is “important,” nothing gets put to the side.
• You can’t say no. Without a clear yes, your backlog turns into a junk drawer.
• Collaboration disappears. With no shared goals, everyone just does the best they can, in different directions.
• Ennui sets in. When you don’t know what’s happening, motivation slips—for you and the team. What’s the point if the direction is just going to change tomorrow?

There’s certainly some strategic context sitting in your leadership’s head, even if you don’t know what it is. Your job is to get it out of there and written down so they can react to it, refine it, and make it clearer.

I have a playbook for extracting this knowledge from a leader’s head, without ever making it feel like they’re being accused of failing on strategic leadership. Let’s walk through each step in detail.

1. Never Say “You Don’t Have a Strategy”

Even if it feels true, saying it out loud lands like an accusation. People hear “you’re doing a bad job,” and the whole conversation slides into defensiveness.

Assume there is a strategy — it’s just living half‑formed in your manager’s head, leaking out in ad‑hoc requests. Your job is to turn “you don’t have one” into “let me reflect back what I’m hearing so we can move faster.”

One thing I discovered when moving into leadership myself is that there’s always additional constraints, context, and reasons why the manager is not sharing as much with you as you’d like. You generally don’t get an inside look into those constraints, and so from your perspective, it might look like there is an absence of leadership. Have empathy instead for the challenges they’re facing, and realize that there are probably reasons why you feel like they are disappointing you.

2. Position Yourself as a Learner and Supporter

I’ll usually open with something disarming: “I want to make sure I’m aligning my work to the broader goals, and I want to learn how you approach strategy. Can I try to write down how I think our strategy works and have you mark it up?” It’s amazing how quickly the temperature drops when you position yourself as a student of their thinking.

Notice what’s happening: you’re reinforcing their authority (“your guidance”), lowering the lift (“one‑pager,” “draft we evolve”), and making the payoff explicit (fewer repeated questions, faster execution). You’re not asking for permission to create bureaucracy; you’re offering leverage. And you’ve framed the exercise as apprenticeship: you’re learning how they think about strategy so you can operationalize it.

3. Interview Your Manager About Their Strategy

I think of interviewing the manager as user research, where my goal is to understand the strategic context they have in their heads.

The easiest question to start with is for them to explain the strategy. But it’s rarely a comprehensive explanation. I am always prepared with some critical follow-up questions:

• Tell me about our target audiences. Why are we going after those users?
• What are some things we really don’t want to do?
• What do you think the world will look like a few years from now and how should we be preparing for that?
• Why are we doing X now? Why not wait on it?
• What financial goals are we targeting?
• Are there external deadlines we need to anchor to (e.g., exit, fundraising, board milestones)?

I listen carefully and add in more questions as we go. By the end of an hour-long conversation, I’ve usually gotten a decent amount of context.

4. Write It Down, Fill the Gaps, and Flag Assumptions

Now you do the most important thing: write it down. Take the information you’ve collected and turn them into a document your manager can react to. Try to make it as true to what they told you as possible.

There are going to be holes in what they’ve told you. In those cases, try your best to fill in the blanks based on what would make the most sense. You can also reverse-engineer the unknowns by analyzing past decisions. Mark with a comment that this is an assumption, so they know to give that extra scrutiny to see if it aligns.

As you’re writing it down, you might also think of new ideas, opportunities, or other ways in which the strategy could be strengthened and expanded. Write those in, because this is your opportunity now to have extraordinary influence on your company’s strategy. Not only are you translating this information from somebody else, but you are now shaping the document where it will be communicated to the rest of the organization. Use this power wisely.

5. Take It Back for Feedback and Refinement

I’ll set the tone up front: “I wrote out my impression of what we discussed and filled in some of the blanks. Let’s walk through it and fixed where I missed things.” Then I walk through the document with them, adding comments and corrections as they point them out.

Close the loop with a crisp next step: “I’ll incorporate today’s edits, highlight any open questions, and circulate this by end of day. If you reply ‘looks good,’ I’ll create a communication plan for you to share it out.” Then follow through.

Once you’ve gotten it to a good place, let them share it out and take the credit. After all, it’s their strategy. But make sure that in that initial draft of the communication that you get a contributing credit – “Thank you to Jenny for writing it all out!” It’s their strategy, you were just the ghostwriter.

Make them look good

It might be frustrating to be doing this exercise with your manager. After all, isn’t it their job to communicate their strategy? Why does this fall on you?

Managing up is just part of the job. As much as we wish we didn’t have to do this, in reality, your manager is dealing with their own set of constraints, time pressure, and execution needs that might be getting in their way of operationalizing and communicating out their strategy.

We need to be strong team players in this case and take the high road of helping them to be more successful in their jobs in order to power our own success instead of waiting on them and getting stuck ourselves in the meantime.

The good news is by doing this you are getting the strategic guidance you need in order to move forward with your own work. So even though it might be frustrating, it helps you reach your goals faster and your manager will remember that you are the one who stepped up to help them be more successful. The better you make them look, the better you look yourself.