Too much focus on comms strategy?

On the 23rd February I attended my first Australian comms event - an IABC New South Wales luncheon at the Blacket hotel in the heart of Sydney's central business district (or "CBD" as all city business centres are commonly know as over here!).

In a great setting on the sky terrace of the hotel, the speaker for the function was David Murray, editor of The Journal of Employee Communication Management who used no Powerpoint (or any slides at all for that matter much to the pleasure of everyone!) to explain his current thoughts surrounding employee comms as they are today.

Lee Hopkins, who I had the pleasure of meeting for the first time at the event, has a good and more timely summary of David's points but I wanted to ask readers of this blog exactly what they thought about the one point that really seemed to polarise opinion - that of strategy.

David stated that these days he believes there's simply too much focus on strategic comms and that organizations are subsequently losing focus on what they really need to be doing in terms of "influential communication" and producing creative ideas to engage employees with the business.

There seemed to be both nodding of heads and some disagreement. What are your thoughts?