a guide to strategy career red flags
How to find a good place to work, or really, the inverse.
I got asked recently, in a chat for APG Canada, how to find a good place to work as a strategist. I waffled, a bit, because I’ve sometimes struggled to find the right places to work myself, and the right people to work for. But, it did get me thinking about the inverse: what are the red flags for a strategist looking for a team or agency to call home. This is all based on my own experiences, hopefully framed in a way that doesn’t feel too singular or specific. As well, in order to make this actionable for others, I’m going to suggest some questions you can ask too explore these factors in interviews, in italics.
Red flags for a potential strategy job:
# 1 They don’t believe in strategy. I’ve worked in some large agencies that have large strategy departments, but that fundamentally don’t believe strategy has value to add to the output of the company. This can manifest in strategy being cut out of the creative process, in being held mostly to an account service role, or in strategy being consistently outvoted in strategic matters by accounts or creative. If you end up in an agency that doesn’t believe in strategy, you’ll spend between 25% and 50% of your time justifying your existence and fighting for a seat at the table. You’d be better served using that time to get better at strategy.
To figure out if this is the case, here are the key questions to ask: 1) what role did strategy play in the development of [the agency’s best recent work]? 2) How often do you meet / work / chat with the leads in your creative department?
#2 There is no flexibility in approach. I’ve commented in the past that strategists need some process, but not too much. An overly tight and prescriptive approach operates on two assumptions: first that better is not possible, and second that all challenges (or categories of challenges) can be approached in the same manner. A work environment that will let you grow and develop, will let you explore, try new things and develop new approaches. This doesn’t mean a “no process” culture with a rejection of templates, for example. But if it seems like your job is box filing, or that the process always leads to a defined set of options at the end, your best possible outcome is to get very good at the way one agency does strategy. The downside is, if you’re not careful, you will spend your entire career trying to turn agencies into the place you first felt like an expert.
Key questions: 1) can you walk me through your agency strategy process? 2) what are the templated elements of how you do strategy work here?
#3 There is no culture of respect. I worked at my agency for maybe 2 weeks before I figured out why I love it here. There’s a culture of genuine respect, not just of people, but the importance of their work to the success of the agency as a whole. I never hear creatives badmouth accounts, and I never hear accounts badmouth creatives. (If they’re badmouthing strategy, they wouldn’t do it in front of me, but I don’t think they are.) I’ve worked at so many shops where strategy is fighting for time to actually do research, or accounts is fighting for the team to listen to the client context, or creative is fighting for the rest of the team to stand up for the work. When you all actually respect what the rest of the team brings to the process, that doesn’t happen. Instead you’re actually all making accommodations to help each other succeed, because this is a team sport.
Key questions: 1) what is the relationship between departments like here? 2) do you have any examples of when accounts or creative helped/made sacrifices to ensure the team could get to the right strategic deliverable?
#4 The role is too narrow. Narrow strategy roles are, in my estimation, a potential trap. Especially at mid-senior levels. Largely because as the number of roles in an agency shrink, and more and more gets automated, people deserve the opportunity to learn how to do broader strategic thinking. To be clear - take whatever role you need to, to break into the industry. But when you’re looking to make a move, aim for something broader than specific channels or platforms. Find the opportunity to help people develop ideas, and to help turn those ideas into effective reality. If a role is narrow and you still want it, try to make sure it doesn’t have a narrow path forward.
Key questions: 1) what kinds of strategy work does this role include? 2) what does the development path for this role look like?
#5 The work is an afterthought. I am of the belief that if you work at an agency, you should care about how the work you do, connects to the output of the company (aka advertising). If you’re with me on that, your job, team, and agency culture should reflect it. This means recognizing that much of what you do is an input - it exists to help the work get made, or to make the work better. Which means, you can largely judge its success by the quality and performance of… the work. Early in my career I focused mostly on the quality of my decks or my briefs, because I could fully control that. That was (and is) bad strategy. Everything we do is about influencing things we do not fully control. If you’re unwilling to deal with that complexity inside your own agency process, you won’t be able to address it in the real world. If culture eats strategy for breakfast, then output eats culture for lunch. The work should be top of mind, and it should be one of the ties that bind you all together.
Key questions: 1) how involved is strategy when it comes to production and post-mortems? 2) what’s the number one priority for the agency?
#6 The people don’t like each other. This is sometimes a symptom, and sometimes a cause, of deeper problems. But if it doesn’t seem like the teams like each other, like the leaders like each other, like the people you see in the office are friendly, run. No agency that’s fun to work at doesn’t have a cultural core of people who like to be around each other. You don’t have to be best friends, but this is often demanding and emotional work, and it’s infinitely harder when you’re not in a position to give each other the benefit of the doubt and a little bit of grace. Liking each other is also an advantage in client relationships and new business, as most people don’t actively seek out tension as a baseline experience. Some of this is agency culture, and shows up in events and internal awards and get-togethers. And some of it is just maintaining a psychologically safe environment; if certain people are allowed to be assholes at work, it has an impact on the experience, usually one that you don’t want to be part of.
Key questions: 1) what kind of events or programs do you have that bring the different teams together? 2) what’s the most common local hangout for staff?
There are obviously a lot of other things that you should watch out for, but these are the at time counter-intuitive ones that do not always stay top of mind. Once you get the job, however, you should focus on how you’re going to get better, and what kind of strategist you want to be.