The Big Picture: Context that Clarifies Strategy & Priorities for Enterprise-Wide Alignment
In short, the Big Picture provides critical context that turns a strategy at the enterprise, division, or team level into something people can act on. And, it provides a framework to identify and troubleshoot any gaps.
What Is the Big Picture and how to know if your team “gets” it?
The Big Picture is a practical tool, made up of 7-9 simple questions, to ensure your strategy is measurably clear to everyone—from the boardroom to the front line, across divisions and geographies.
When everyone “gets” the Big Picture, they can have confidence that their day-to-day decisions align with the organization’s strategy and top priorities.
If your leadership team struggles to answer and communicate the Big Picture Questions or they disagree on the order of priorities—you may have just uncovered why your teams are experiencing friction or struggling to meet timelines. They are working on assumptions rather than from a place of alignment.
Why do teams need a Big Picture? Because Context Matters—For Humans and AI Agents
In AI Agent integration projects, before you assign tasks to agents, you must establish the context in which decisions will be made.
In AI circles, “context” is the information an agent needs so it doesn’t hallucinate or make bad choices. But here’s the overlooked truth:
Humans do the exact same thing.
If you don’t give them context, they will create it – sometimes running very fast in the wrong direction.
They’ll guess at what matters most. They’ll infer priorities. They’ll decide whether going faster, saving money, delighting customers, or avoiding risk is the real goal—because they must decide something in order to act.
Multiply that across teams, and suddenly:
Marketing optimizes for engagement
Ops optimizes for cost control
Product optimizes for speed
Compliance optimizes for safety
They’re all right at a team level—and yet they’re collectively misaligned.
This is why starting with the Big Picture isn’t a formality. It’s risk mitigation. It ensures everyone—human and digital—operates from a shared perspective. Without intentionally defined context, collaboration devolves into: debates, endless meetings with no real results, stalled initiatives, and frustrated stakeholders.
The Big Picture Questions:
9 “simple” questions that drive alignment and ensure people are focused on the right work at any given moment.
What is our team’s core purpose or function?
What are the products and services we provide?
To whom do we deliver these products and services?
With whom do we partner to deliver them?
Who are our competitors?
What metrics do we track?
What history explains how we got here?
What external trends or issues are important to our strategy?
What are the top three things we’re doing to support the business strategy?
To make the answers as clear and effective as possible follow these three simple rules when drafting your answers:
Use clear, simple language (no jargon or lingo)
Make sure your answers differentiate your team from others
Prioritize your answers in list form
How to Use the Big Picture
You can get enduring value from this tool in a variety of ways. Here are three ways to apply the Big Picture to address immediate business needs:
1. Reveal Misalignment in Minutes
Have each leader present their Big Picture in 10 minutes. Invite others to listen.
Where answers differ, you’ve found misalignment worth fixing—not in theory, but in practice.
2. Prioritize AI (or any major transformation)
Use the Big Picture to identify where AI would actually strengthen your competitive position—not just reduce costs. Lead direct conversations with this framework to develop a targeted list of activities that are prioritized relative to the rest of the work on everyone’s plates.
3. Accelerate Change
Compare the old Big Picture with the new one to highlight what’s changed and why. Use it to troubleshoot “stuck” transformations including AI.
If you want to see more ways you can leverage the Big Picture, learn more here.
If you have gotten this far, you are in a good position to use the Big Picture to align your team and ensure they are making progress on top priorities with their day-to-day work.
If you want to roll this framework out in a clear, structured, and scalable process across your division or the enterprise reach out at info@stevetrautman.com.