Articulating Strategy Is As Important As Creating It
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The servants always know when something is going wrong in their "master's" home, sometimes before their master.
Speechwriters are the same way.
Peggy Noonan (she worked in the Reagan White House as a speech writer) tells of a late request to complete a Bush I State of the Union address - five days before the address (Noonan, 94). It was evidence of lack of something - leadership, perhaps. Her estimate was that things weren't well in the White House.
Speechwriters also know when something is going right in the White House. The evidence is how much access they have to the President to make sure that what they write reflects what the President is actually thinking.
All the Presidents had important lines that delineated what they were thinking. All along there has been someone in the background providing the lines. And there was a President who made the delivery of the lines his business. Reagan was called the great communicator. He worked as closely with his speech-writing team as any president. Such lines as "we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil ..." (Schlesinger, 331) came from Reagan himself. Everyone said "you can't say that", "it can't be done." Reagan said it, went down that path, and made the words and the thoughts behind them stick. He thought it (his thought went back at least to the fifties, if not the forties) and he said it. The words drove his initiatives for the rest of his presidency.
What about CEOs? I saw a Gateway CEO wing it in front of an audience about a year ago. If I am not mistaken he is gone now. His words didn't really say anything. I heard a Boeing executive, who ended up CEO, speak. His words reflected his status. They were exciting, provided a vision for the future, and were actionable. I heard a COO of a housing company speak. His words were specific, laden with actionable thoughts, and the internal crowd loved it.
Which brings us around to you, and your strategy, and what your say when people ask you to speak. I've been doing this long enough that I ought to have the specific answer for every case. There are models - Kennedy and Reagan certainly were inspiring - for success. There are models for how to construct what you're going to say. We say, "What's your product, what's your marketplace. Don't talk about anything but that when you're talking about your mission statement."
What's right for you? Values count, so I'd delineate my values - and the company values - pretty early in the process. You have to make a decision about hierarchies. Do customers go first, or employees? What about the environment? Green is big right now. Is it going to be a heartfelt problem at your company, or marketing hype? You get to decide. I continue to be sure that people are listening more than you might assume. If you are going to speak, spend time on what you are going to say. It is important.
References
Noonan, Peggy. Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. Random House. 1994.
Schlesinger, Robert. White House Ghosts. Presidents and Their Speechwriters. Simon & Schuster, Inc. 2008.