Corporate Goals

I was recently reading a blog post (an interesting read, if somewhat long and technically focussed).
The point that stuck was in the first few paragraphs where it talks about the ideal state in a corporation. Where everything is aligned with the company strategy. Where the approach taken at each branch of the corporate tree contributes to the goals of the level above.
It occurred to me that I have no idea what my organisation's goals *are* at the company, unit or account level - nor what the strategies are in place to achieve them. This makes it quite difficult for me to tell if what I am doing is aligned or not; whether I am helping or hindering the strategies.

I have had several useful discussions at the account level which clarified how specific projects fit within the (implied) strategies. But I did not learn what those strategies were - only how my manager thought they applied to the immediate situation.
There are exceptions; the CEO of our local branch recently shared her intent to drive the company toward a more socially responsible role - and was asking for suggested strategies to achieve that. The CEO of our parent company has mentioned, as an aside in a corporate-wide message, that he sees the global company heading toward a more product-centric future. Both of these *appear* to be aligned with the published corporate vision, but it is very difficult to tell since it will be critically dependent on how the goals are implemented. And that will depend on the strategies adopted.
Obviously not all strategies can be advertised widely for business reasons, and certainly they will adapt over time to changing circumstances. But it should also be true that there are directions that the corporation would like to head, and decisions made about the means to achieve this, which can be shared with all employees.
The majority of these intents may not be directly relevant to my day to day work, it helps me put context on what we are doing. And it provides an approach to take when talking to clients or other team members. Apart from anything else, understanding the reasoning behind decisions made by the governing team, at each level in the organisation, provides more relevance to the work and therefore a greater sense of engagement.

So, given the advantages, how does it come about that we know nothing about the direction the company is intending to go? The trouble is that there are very many managers who like to play things very close to their chests. Letting people know what you are doing leaves the door open for them to comment on how you do it; or, even worse, discover that you are NOT aligned and are working on your own behalf, not the company's.
I have had one account manager (i.e. a sales person) ask us to put together a web-site where his team could enter in the current prospects, how much they were worth, the likelihood of conversion etc. One of the requirements was that it NOT be able directly upload to the corporate dashboard. He wanted to make sure he had the chance to 'adjust' the figures before they became visible to his bosses.
In addition, I have found our company to be almost paranoid about what "leaks" out to the media and how they might spin the information. I am not sure whether this is a consequence of the size of the company, the culture (internally or externally) or the pre-delictions of the governance team. I do find it is very difficult to get any information about the reasons behind are policies and what they are intended to achieve.