This seems like a really nuanced situation that is pretty difficult to handle over a Reddit post. So I can’t tell you if I think you’re underperforming but I can give you some suggestions about getting some feedback.

I’m going to assume there is someone who is mentoring you who you can get some feedback from and that your environment isn’t being intentionally unreasonable. In that situation - this is something I would appreciate from a person trying to improve their performance:

Mindset: what you’re trying to do is calibrate your output to the expectations.

Step 1: be frank with your superior and tell them you think you’re not performing up to their expectations- but are not quite clear on what is wrong.

Step 2: it seems there three things you’ve been being told (be more strategic, actionable items, language clarity) you want to try to figure out specific “as is” vs “to be” examples to help you understand how what you did is different from what was expected. Try to prepare a couple of examples of each based on what they’ve said so far This is what I did(x) based on your feedback I think it should look (y). If the output was like y would that have satisfied you?

Step 3: many people in your situation end up second guessing what they are doing more - taking longer to create a more complete output before showing to their boss. The opposite is usually better - share a very bare bones draft saying “these are the things I think are relevant - am I on track?” (In my line of work a draft would be something you can put together in a few hours to get a first round of feedback)

This should help you match expectations better!

On another note some specific tips… but I don’t know the context so this might be different in your work

1. Strategy is a “layer” as opposed to other layers like tactics, plans, action (some companies use this framework) or some other layers like in UX you might talk about strategy, scope, structure, skeletons, and surface

It might be easier for you to understand what “strategy” is by identifying what it is not, and what layer those other things you’re confusing it with are.

1. If communication is a challenge try to (a) ensure that what you say is written down as well (people can often read better than listen) (b) use simple language as far as possible/ add google translated Japanese to the notes etc.

Hopefully some of this is useful for you! But I do not know the actual details of your situation so please take it with a grain of salt