Hello there đ
Welcome to issue forty three of Manufacturing Serendipity, a newsletter which is ordinarily comprised of a bunch of loosely connected, somewhat rambling collection of the unexpected things Iâve recently encountered.
The fortnightâs edition is a little different: the usual collection of links, book and TV recommendations, etc, will be back in abundance next time, but real life got in the way of me preparing this edition, and so Iâm sending you this slightly rambling essay instead.
As always, this newsletter is free to receive, but if youâd like to support me in this strange little endeavour you can buy me a coffee đ
Back in 2019, I put together a talk for the newly-formed Women in TechSEO group, which was created by my wonderful friend Areej. Today that group has grown to over 5,000 global members(!), but back in July 2019, if I recall correctly, I gave my talk in-person, to around 30 women.
It was a wonderful experience. Iâd very recently left Verve Search, and this was my first speaking gig as an independent consultant. Sat facing me, were a group of women who were utterly engaged, and excited to be there.
Whilst I could never have predicted how large that group would become, nevertheless I remember thinking how safe, and supported I felt as a speaker; and excited about how the group might grow and develop in the future.
The talk I gave back in 2019 was called âPlaying the Orchestra (or, what the f*ck I think people mean, when they say you need to think more strategically)â. It was very loosely based on an internal training session Iâd run when I was at Verve Search, (which Areej had attended); and she asked if Iâd do a version of it for her newly-formed meet-up group.
Over the past fortnight, this talk popped up in my head again, thanks to various conversations Iâve been having about âstrategyâ, or, more accurately – what I think we mean when we talk about âstrategyâ.
Those conversations led me to believe that some of the things I shared back in 2019, may well be useful and/or relevant to others – hence this essay.
But enough of this rambling intro: grab yourself a suitable beverage my loves, letâs do this thing…
What does âPlaying the Orchestraâ have to do with strategy?
Back in 2019, the process of putting together the talk caused me to disappear down a bunch of rabbit holes. This conversation (which never actually happened) was the first one I disappeared down:
Wozniak:
Youâre not an engineer.
Youâre not a designer.
You canât put a hammer to a nail.
I built the circuit board.
The graphical interface was stolen.
So how come, 10 times in a day, I read Steve Jobs is a genius?
What do you do?
Jobs:
Musicians play their instruments. I play the orchestra.
How did I come across this? I donât really know. I think I was just trying to come up with a title for my talk⌠Possibly I was googling quotes about strategy. Anyway, I came across the quote, and then came across the movie trailer: serendipity (somewhat manufactured).
Like I said above, this conversation between Wozniak and Jobs never actually happened. Itâs taken from the trailer of the 2015 Steve Jobs biopic. (Incidentally, when asked about the film, Wozniak said that accuracy comes second to entertainment, but that he enjoyed it nevertheless.)
I elected to use it, because I think it illustrates how, as a society, we have a tendency to value the contributions of those considered âstrategicâ or âsmartâ (in this case Jobs), above those who are doing the doing (in this case Wozniak).
While I was watching the trailer, something else occurred to me:
In the world of work, we are divided into two classes of people: those who are considered strategic, and those who arenât.
âThink more strategicallyâ they saidâŚ
At various points in my career Iâve been challenged to âthink more strategicallyâ.
When I asked what was meant by: âthink more strategicallyâ, I was told: âYou think too tactically, we need strategy, not tactics.â
I remember thinking at the time that I really wasnât clear on the difference between the two. However, not wishing to get into a circular semantic discussion, I instead asked for some help developing in this area.
This request was met with a blank stare. âStrategy isnât something you can teachâ was the response.
Something of a thorny problem isnât it?
I was being told that I needed to have more of this mystical quality (the ability to think strategically), but that apparently this isnât something that can be taught.
I resolved to try to figure this stuff out for myself, but twenty years on, Iâm still trying to figure it out.
Weâve got problems peopleâŚ
It strikes me that we have three problems conspiring together to make this unholy mess:
- Strategy is a poorly defined concept
- Thereâs confusion around the difference between strategy and tactics
- Thereâs a perception that strategy canât be taught
I decided to explore those problems a little further, and disappeared down a few more rabbit holes.
When marketing borrowed the language of warâŚ
I began by doing a little research on how and when the concept of strategy (in a business or marketing context) came about.
Prior to the 1950s, strategy was a term used almost exclusively by the military; until Peter Drucker helped popularise the concept of âstrategic managementâ.
At that point in time, there was a wholesale import of military terminology â in effect, marketing borrowed the language of war:
We support strategies with tactics, and target consumers with campaigns.
The problem in particular with the terms: âstrategiesâ and âtacticsâ is that they are conceptual. Whatâs the difference between âstrategicâ and âtacticalâ?
Actually, even the dictionary isnât sure:
strategic:
relating to the identification of long-term or overall aims and interests
and the means of achieving them
tactical:
showing adroit planning; aiming at an end beyond the immediate action
Is it any wonder people confuse strategy and tactics?
Thinking more about this, I came to a further realisation. I suspect that the term âstrategicâ has somewhere along the way become synonymous with âsmartâ.
smart:
having or showing a quick-witted intelligence
Someone could of course be both strategic and smart, but they arenât the same thing.
I felt like this could go some way to explaining some of the problems inherent in any conversations about strategic thinking:
- Some people think that thereâs a clearer demarcation between strategy and tactics than those dictionary definitions above indicate.
- Some people think that strategic = smart.
- Some people possibly think both of those things?
But I remained puzzled. When a concept is poorly defined of course it makes it necessarily harder to teach, but it still shouldnât be impossible.
Why is it that some people seem to think that strategy isnât something you can teach?
Possibly, the people who think that strategy isnât something you can teach, think that strategic thinking is a talent as opposed to a skill.
talent
a natural ability to be good at something, without being taught
skill
the ability to do an activity or job well, because you have practised it
Iâm not sure that I believe in talent. In my experience, the people who are described as âtalentedâ by others, in reality, practise constantly.
I believe that thinking strategically is a skill not a talent.
Itâs something you can learn, and, if you practise, you can become great.
Trouble is, even if you, like me, accept that thinking strategically is a skill rather than a talent, weâve still got problems.
How does strategic thinking differ from tactical thinking?
On this point, dear reader, Iâm stuck đ
My instinct is, that the difference between strategy and tactics is simply one of perception.
Possibly somewhat lazily Iâm electing to opt out of that particular debate altogether. I suspect endless discussions around what constitutes a tactic and what constitutes a strategy arenât going to get us far anyway.
More importantly, I think that teaching yourself to think strategically, whether youâre thinking strategically about a strategy or strategically about a tactic (or whatever hideous military language you want to use) is really valuable.
But thereâs still the issue of defining what we mean when we say strategy.
What do people mean, when they say we need to âthink more strategicallyâ?
I think that maybe some of this is about specificity. When people say things like âwe need to think more strategicallyâ, this is what I think they mean:
make specific recommendations
that will help a particular company
in a particular market
achieve a defined objective
As such, I wonder if demonstrating âstrategic thinkingâ is more about how you position whatever course of action youâre recommending; and less about the recommendations themselves.
In order to appear more strategic, rather than just making recommendations; first you need to clearly define the problem, and then explain how what youâre recommending helps to solve it.
For example, in the past week, a client asked me to make some recommendations about how they could restructure and grow their internal PR team. I could just have sent a bunch of recommendations to that company, and to be honest, that probably would have been fine.
But rather than do that, I did the following:
- I explained the current structure and the problems associated with it (in this instance it both limited the amount of work which could be delivered, and offered team members little in the way of opportunity for progression)
- I demonstrated how the new structure I was proposing would alleviate those problems (increased output, plus clear paths to progression for team members)
Is this actually an example of either strategic or smart thinking? Honestly, I donât know; but I suspect that some others might perceive it that way.
And the truth is, thatâs what weâre really battling with here – we need our work to be perceived as strategic or smart – whether or not this work is actually is either of these things might not actually be that important.
Perception is reality, right?
Maybe you buy that, maybe you donât; letâs go back to the talk.
I was still puzzling over what might else might cause people to perceive certain types of thinking as either âstrategicâ or âsmartâ, and so I spent a bunch of time trying to find some examples of successful âstrategiesâ (again, itâs possible youâll consider these tactics, not strategies – hence the inverted commas – ugh, this is tiring isnât it?), to see if I could find any commonality between them.
As I was doing this, I remembered that actually Iâd already explored this topic before â way back in 2012 I wrote this post (the original is no longer live – but thanks to web.archive.org it lives on), and I found a bunch of great examples there:
The planner that piped upâŚ
AMV.BBDO were being asked to pitch a TV campaign for Sainsburyâs. Their objective was to drive an additional ÂŁ3 billion in revenue over a two year period.
Pretty tall order, huh?
How the hell do you go about delivering ÂŁ3 billion in revenue? Get new customers? How? Ideas were being thrown around, criticised and rejected â the pressure was on.
Then a planner piped up:
Iâve been doing some calculations. We donât need new customers at all. If we get every existing customer to spend an additional ÂŁ1.85 every time they visit, then weâll hit our revenue target.
Instantly the messaging of the advertising campaign changed. Instead of focusing on attracting new customers the focus was brought back to existing ones.
They recognised that most supermarket customers were stuck in a rut or âsleep shoppingâ â buying the same things week in, week out (and of course therefore â eating the same food every week).
They hooked up with Jamie Oliver and the âtry something new todayâ campaign was born.
They delivered that ÂŁ3 billion revenue increase in one year, rather than two.
Building incubators from 4Ă4 parts
An international development charity raised money to provide incubators for premature babies in developing countries.
The problem was these incubators quickly broke down, and no one knew how to fix them.
However, someone noticed that every village seemingly had an old, clapped out 4Ă4 vehicle which, against all odds, still seemed to function just fine. Clearly the expertise was there on hand to fix up and maintain old 4x4s.
So, they built incubators out of 4Ă4 parts so the people there would be able to maintain and fix the incubators themselves.
When reading that old post of mine, another story popped into my head:
The last da Vinci
In 2017, auction house Christieâs had the opportunity to sell a painting. This painting (purportedly created by Leonardo da Vinci) was expected to sell for $100 million.
There are very few people on the planet who both want to own, and are able to afford a piece like this, but interestingly, Christieâs didnât just target those people. Instead, they targeted the masses. They deliberately targeted people who could not afford to buy that painting.
They toured the piece like a circus act, with exhibits in Hong Kong, San Francisco, London and New York.
But why?
value â price
They realised that the painting would achieve a higher price at auction if people who could not afford it, valued it highly.
âChristieâs realised that those buyers would pay an extra few million for the privilege of owning a painting that was iconicâŚâ
~Ian Leslie
The painting achieved $450.3 million at auction (way above the $100 million they expected).
These stories each concern solving a (reasonably) clearly defined problem – all good so far – but whatâs more interesting perhaps, is that the individuals solved these problems in a novel way.
Could novelty be a factor? (i.e. are these stories held up as good examples of either âstrategicâ or âsmartâ thinking because the solutions are novel?)
All these people offered up solutions that wouldnât ordinarily be considered to be within their remit:
- the planner who suggested targeting existing customers with advertising, rather than new customers
- the charity who found a new way to built incubators for premature babies
- the person at the auction house who employed mass-media tactics rather than personalisation
It occurs to me therefore, that in some instances, when people ask us to think more strategically what theyâre really asking for is a novel solution. As such, an invitation to âthink strategicallyâ might actually be an invitation to explore options or potential solutions that ordinarily wouldnât be considered within your remit.
So where are we at?
I think that if you want to be seen as more âstrategicâ (or possibly just âsmartâ), it might be helpful to:
- Consider specificity – i.e. try to make specific recommendations, that will help this particular company, in this particular market, achieve a defined objective.
- Consider how youâre positioning whatever it is youâre recommending. Clearly define the problem and then explain how what youâre recommending solves it.
- Consider whether or not what youâre really being asked for is a novel or otherwise unusual solution – i.e. something which might ordinarily be considered outside of your remit.
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