By design
When I got to Innocean in 2014 I sat down with the then COO, Brad Fogel, for an intro chat. He’d been an agency head and CMO throughout his career, and he carried himself with the self-possession of someone who wasn’t fazed by everyday advertising things. He was also one of the first exec-types who seemed to go out of his way to look out for me and send words of encouragement even years after we worked together. During our chat he used a simple analogy for strategy: it’s the bridge that gets us from where we are to where we want to be.
Among all the other useful ways to think about how to come up with a strategy that makes the most sense, I’ve found it helpful at times to come back to a grounding principle of what we’re even doing here.
I recently read Good Strategy, Bad Strategy and the author, Richard Rumelt, makes a point to deviate from something we’ve all learned (strategy as choice) to a different POV (strategy as design). He explains:
The problem with this view [that strategy is choice], and the reason it barely lightens a leader’s burden, is that you are rarely handed a clear set of alternatives. In the case at hand, Hannibal was certainly not briefed by a staff presenting four options arranged on a PowerPoint slide. Rather, he faced a challenge and he designed a novel response. Today, as then, many effective strategies are more designs than decisions — are more constructed than chosen.
Strategy moves us toward something that doesn’t exist yet — a future in which, if we design our plans well enough, we get what we want. The difference between choosing it and constructing it gives the flexibility and agency that useful plans require.
I’ve been slowly reading Natasha Lunn’s beautiful book, Conversations On Love. In her conversation with the poet Lemn Sissay on the topic of finding love, the latter says, “Well, here’s the gift: our experiences are bridges not ravines. They allow us to understand the world and its dysfunctions more.”
Sure, making money (every company’s goal, regardless of how it’s adorned) is not the same as finding love. But I find the notion of bridge-as-experience a powerful one. In either pursuit — money or love — we’re using a pocketfull of often crude resources to figure out what to do next amidst a whole lot of unknown. Building what we can gives us something to do next.
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I write these posts, 3-MINUTE MONDAYS, every other week. My goal with them is to share a snippet of insight into how to do strategy, build teams, and grow. Comment here or message me on LinkedIn if you want to chat. — Ben
