The Tensions That Will Define Your Career
How to thrive in this industry as a strategy human
(A couple weeks ago, Alex Morris of the consistently insightful strat_scraps newsletter / consultancy linked one of my older pieces in a newsletter. It had me reflecting on how the most widely read stuff I’ve written here is of the “how to get better at strategy” category, rather than the “here’s me ranting at you via email” category. I’m apparently unwilling to abandon the latter, but I’m going to try to alternate with the former.)
Managing a strategy career is about balancing three tensions. There is no “correct” answer to any of these above tensions, but they cause the greatest amount of anxiety in up-and-coming strategic thinkers, and are often the biggest sources of career setbacks.
Explain vs Excuse
You are going to make mistakes. They might be easily manageable “that was not the right thing to say in an email” mistakes, or “you did not understand the research you based a strategy on as well as you think you did” mistakes, or sometimes even “your strategy did not work, at all” mistakes. To err is human, and understanding humans is the job. But the issue that will come up is your response to those mistakes: do you know the difference between an explanation and an excuse?
I had a boss who once, with some restraint, explained to me that when something goes wrong, there is not a meaningful difference between explaining how it is not your fault, and making excuses. Now there is a *technical* difference between the two, but in a social environment like an agency, this is a negligible separation. Explanations are extremely valuable, once you’ve taken your share of criticism and tried to get value from it. But there is an overwhelming urge to defend oneself and explain why something is not your fault (an excuse) rather than explaining why something happened (an attempt to diagnose the issue).
People who don’t learn to navigate the desire to make an excuse, versus taking criticism and explaining, are usually not considered great team players. Which leads us to our next tension;
Collaborate vs Capitulate
Similar to any compromise, it can be difficult to figure out where the line is between being a good strategic collaborator who takes input from creative and accounts partners, and being a pushover who lets the rest of the team walk all over them. I’d love to say there’s a simple rule to follow here, but it’s almost always situational. Some agencies, partners, and even clients are uninterested in collaboration, and your options are “do as I say” or “get asked off the business / team / agency”.
But in more ideal environments, the best advice I’ve received is to be flexible about your ideas, but be firm about your principles. Standing up for a specific key message is less important than standing up for the idea that the key message needs to be tied to the problem and the insight, for example. Success isn’t seeing your own ideas in the presentation, it’s seeing the best ideas in the presentation. Sometimes being a great collaborator is being able to admit your ideas are not the best.
The biggest point of contention on this issue is the brief. This is an unpopular opinion, but if a good idea that solves the client problem doesn’t follow the brief, that’s fine. Sometimes the best way a strategist can collaborate is to do the back-rationalization to make sure a great idea is also strategically sound. Being able and willing to do this without whining is, in my mind, the mark of a pro - realizing the strategy is never bigger than the end product - you are part of a team, always.
Fish Size vs Pond Size
Figuring out whether you’d benefit from being the big fish in a small pond, or a small fish in a big pond, is maybe the biggest question in career development for strategists. Are you in a stage where you need to focus on honing your craft and learning a broader strategic toolkit, or should you be building agency processes and managing strategy teams?
Both of these experiences are key to your development, but you need them at the right time and in the right order. Chasing seniority and title at the wrong time (small pond) can make it difficult to get hired for your next role. Staying in the big pond and playing a support role for too long can make you feel like you’re stuck. I’ve made a point of moving between the two, basically staying in big ponds to learn, develop, and work on larger, multi-national brands, and shifting to smaller ponds to play a bigger role in guiding an agency, developing new ways of working, and getting to work with more innovative, challenger brands.
I’m not arguing in favour of aggressive job-hopping, but I do think it’s worth considering if you’re going to be exposed to new strategic challenges where you are. The size of your environment, and your role in it, are huge factors in what you will end up being and doing in 5 years.
A career is a complicated thing. You’re dealing with countless considerations and stressors, and you can only really sail where the wind is blowing. But these three things, well managed, will respectively help you earn the respect of your managers and peers, become the kind of person your colleagues ask to work with, and to make career decisions with a development mindset. Or, you could rely on getting lucky.