Here's how most communication strategies get written: backwards.
The client hands over a brief. In it: a list of objectives set before you arrived, a list of activities that must be delivered whether they fit the strategy or not, the channels they currently communicate on, the audiences they currently communicate to. And the list goes on.
The ever-so-slightly fearful consultant takes all of this as constraint. Every objective will be addressed. Every activity delivered. Every channel used, every audience reached. The strategy gets written around what already exists, and the result is a post-hoc rationale - lending the sheen of coherence to what was already proposed. That isn't strategy. It's decoration. And it offers the institutional client almost no consultation on the most important part of the work.
The braver consultant analyses the constraints and refines them. Sharper messaging here, better sequencing there. The individual actions become more tactically sound. But step back and the client still hasn't got a strategy because too many objectives, too many activities, too many audiences and channels makes for bad strategy by definition.
Strategy is choosing. Which goal, of everything on the list, will actually lead to the impact the institution wants? Choose it. Recommend cutting the rest, or at least subordinating it. The client may not like that. Fine, but that's their decision to make, and they may have reasons you can't see - especially when they are potentially considering a wider range of stakeholders they need to satisfy. But it has to be their decision, made with your best recommendation in front of them.
Because not even offering that recommendation is a failure of bravery. And since the client is paying precisely for judgment they don't have in-house, it's ultimately a kind of dishonesty.
You won't always win the argument. You don't need to but you do need to have made it.
