Strategy Presentations as a CEO Candidate: What Boards Actually Ask For

A presentation is close to standard in a final-round CEO process, and increasingly so at general manager level and above. The brief is usually some version of tell us what you would do in your first 90 days — or first 12 months — in twenty to thirty minutes, to the nomination committee or the full board, with slides sent ahead. Sometimes a short written pre-read is asked for as well. Sometimes the timeframe is left open. When it is, we recommend a 12-month plan with the first 90 days broken out inside it.

That is the mechanical answer. The substantive one starts with a question most candidates never ask: whose strategy is this?

The board owns the strategy. You are auditioning to execute it

The ASX Corporate Governance Council’s Corporate Governance Principles and Recommendations, fourth edition — released 27 February 2019 and still in force as at August 2026 — lists among a board’s typical responsibilities “defining the entity’s purpose and setting its strategic objectives”, “appointing and replacing the CEO”, and “overseeing management in its implementation of the entity’s strategic objectives”.

Read those three together. The people in the room set the strategy. They are hiring someone to implement it. Then they watch.

So the presentation that opens with a bold new direction — the one implying the last three years were wasted — does not read as vision. It reads as a candidate who has not worked out what a board is for. The presentations that land do the opposite: they take the strategy the company has already published, agree with the parts that are working, name the two or three places where execution has stalled, and then say precisely what would change about how it is being done. You can argue for a change of direction. Do it in the second half, having earned it, and as something you would bring to the board rather than something you have decided on their behalf.

The fourth edition is being replaced, though not dramatically. ASX opened public consultation on a draft fifth edition on 21 July 2026, with submissions closing at 5pm AEST on Monday 14 September 2026. The draft came from an advisory group chaired by Dr Philip Lowe, the former Reserve Bank governor, and ASX says the intention is to “refine – but not redesign” the existing framework. So the ground is not about to move under you. But if you are presenting to an ASX-listed board in the next few weeks, the directors in front of you are forming a view on it right now, and knowing that is free.

The confidentiality trap

This is the fastest way to lose a role you had already won.

You are a senior executive. You know your employer’s margin by segment, the pricing about to go to market, the acquisition that has not been announced. The company interviewing you is a competitor, or close enough. And you have been asked to demonstrate that you understand the industry.

Don’t.

Section 183 of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) provides that a person who obtains information because they are, or have been, a director or other officer or employee of a corporation must not improperly use that information to gain an advantage for themselves or someone else, or to cause detriment to the corporation. Two features catch executives out. It covers employees, not only directors. And it survives your resignation — “are, or have been”.

If both companies are listed and the information is price-sensitive and not generally available, there is a second problem. Section 1043A prohibits not only dealing on inside information but communicating it to another person where you know, or ought reasonably to know, that they would be likely to trade or to procure trading.

The commercial risk is simpler than the legal one and far more likely to bite. A board that watches you monetise your current employer’s confidential information has just been shown, at no cost to itself, exactly what you will do to them.

It runs the other way too. If the board briefs you on an unannounced transaction so you can build a credible plan, you now hold inside information about that entity, and if you hold its securities you cannot deal in them. Ask, before the briefing, whether what you are about to be told is market-sensitive.

Build the plan from the public record

The underused document is the remuneration report. Section 300A requires every listed company to include one in its directors’ report, and where remuneration depends on performance conditions it must disclose “a detailed summary of the performance condition”, “an explanation of why the performance condition was chosen”, and a summary of the methods used in assessing whether it has been satisfied. That is the board stating publicly, under legal compulsion, what it has committed to measuring. Build your 12-month plan against those measures and you are speaking the board’s own language back to it.

While you are in there, check the voting history. Under sections 250U and 250V, a company must put a spill resolution to its AGM where at least 25% of the votes cast go against adopting the remuneration report at two consecutive AGMs. A board carrying a first strike has a live investor problem, and a candidate who has noticed is a candidate who has read something.

The commonest failure modes

• Too many slides. Twenty minutes is about ten slides. Candidates routinely build three or four times that many, get through a third of the pack, and demonstrate poor judgement about what matters in the process.
• No numbers. “Improve operational efficiency”, to a board that reports segment results to the market twice a year.
• A 90-day plan that is entirely listening. Ninety days of stakeholder meetings is not a plan. Name at least one decision you would make in the first 30 days.
• Forgetting the owner. For a family business, a super fund portfolio company or a government business enterprise, the first 90 days are as much about the owner as the customer.
• Presenting to the room you can see. These sessions are routinely hybrid. You will not know who dials in, or whether the chair is on a phone in a car. Build slides that read on their own on a small screen, and never say “as you can see here”.
• No stakeholder map. One page, everyone who matters, what each of them wants. Cheapest artefact in the pack, and almost nobody brings it.

What we would do

1. Ask what they want. Timeframe, duration, audience, slides ahead or not, pre-read or not. Most candidates are too proud to ask and then guess wrong. Asking is itself evidence that you scope work before you do it.
2. Default to 12 months if the timeframe is unspecified, with 30, 60 and 90-day milestones inside it, and the first 90 days weighted across owners, customers and the executive team.
3. Source every claim to a public document and be able to say which one. A board that can trace your numbers to its own annual report will believe the rest of you.
4. Bring nothing you would be uncomfortable having your current chair read.
5. Stand behind it. The presentation is not the strategy; it is the articulation of a strategy you have already committed to. Offer the board a menu of options and you have told them you do not have a view.

Presentations and case exercises are part of what our executive interview coaching covers, alongside board and chair interviews. If you have one in the diary, that is the conversation to have.

Sources: ASX Corporate Governance Council, Corporate Governance Principles and Recommendations, 4th edition, released 27 February 2019, asx.com.au, accessed 18 August 2026; ASX, Corporate Governance Council page and consultations and submissions page (public consultation on draft 5th edition opened 21 July 2026, submissions close 5pm AEST 14 September 2026; advisory group chaired by Dr Philip Lowe; ASX states the intention is to “refine – but not redesign” the framework), accessed 18 August 2026; Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) ss 183, 250U, 250V, 300A(1)(ba) and 1043A, consolidated text via AustLII, accessed 18 August 2026. Most recent source consulted: 18 August 2026