I’m not a bashful fella, as I’m sure you already know. But when somebody outside normal business settings asks me what I do for a living, I choke. I’m a self conscious strategist. Always have been, perhaps because when I try to casually describe it out of context it inevitably transmits accidental delusions of grandeur. “They pay you to do what…?”
Now, you should definitely tell me to get over myself, but humour me for a second; have you ever asked what a strategist is actually for?
My 9yr old daughter certainly has. In front of me last week, she proudly told her friend that “my dad makes money just by sitting on calls”. They agreed it was a wonderful plan for them when they grow up because they could just sit and have lots of calls and make lots of money. I’m flattered to be such an inter-generational role model, yet I’m unsure if they’ve adequately captured the full nuance of the role.
But I digress. We all know that strategy is just a fancy label for making a plan. Albeit a coherent plan, in difficult conditions, with a lot riding on its success. But when anyone dons the “strategist hat” to lead their team through the process, I believe there is some unspoken responsibility that comes with that.
"The strategist's job isn't simply to make a plan. It's to prepare people to believe it."
Put simply, a strategist's purpose is to make complex commercial concepts or positions easy to understand. We’re literally there to aid others to step confidently towards their goal.
I like to imagine that “a strategy” is the plan to achieve your goal; but “the strategist” is necessary to “prepare” people to take action. This distinction really matters in business and in some ways elegantly explains why positioning strategy in particular can feel so hard. When you shift the positioning for a product, you’re also changing the positioning for the team who live, build and drive that product. You’re asking people to reset or reframe part of their work identity. And we all know how hard it can be to get humans to deal with change!
Fundamentally, positioning is nothing but an idea. We attribute this abstract idea to a tangible product, to help customers make the right association about our offer. So the strongest positioning theory will only work if people buying or using it actually believe it. Our commercial success depends on our customers believing our positioning. And our ability to execute our growth plans depends entirely on our team's willingness to believe that too.
Their action feeds on belief. Because when the team deeply believes, they start to live it and visualise their future through it. Before too long, it’s naturally become part of their decision making and recruiting criteria. Their reality is bent to fit and performance lifts. We can all point to many teams we admire with this level of conviction.
Practically though, when you’re serious about catapulting your new positioning into action, any amount of inspirational team briefing isn’t going to engender belief on its own. Your challenge might feel like persuasion, but it’s rather more about preparation.
Think for a moment about the passionate founder you know. Their conviction about their place in the market draws from a deep well of personal experience, lived stories of the pain point and their imagined solution. But it’s impractical to replicate as a venture scales because you really can’t recruit based on lived experience of the customers' pain point. So instead, substitute “emotional contribution” as a proxy for it. When everybody has been heard, they have personal equity in the solution. Or that’s the theory anyway, so after much experimentation over the years, here are three ways to practically build that into your own positioning process:
Good data is essential in positioning, but is by its nature dehumanising. Prioritise discussion time for real world experiences your team has had in market, with your customers or your users. Draw the line overtly between the stories they shared and the final positioning, so everybody can see their personal stake in the updated positioning.
Some people excel at abstraction, while some are naturally very literal. No matter how you think, sharing your experiences and story is still non-negotiable. Spend more time unearthing the personal stories than explaining the process; it will get you moving faster. If even after that you have people who won’t share, it usually means they don’t care, which your process will never be able to solve.
We often work at pace in positioning sprints, gathering data and making decisions so all that is visible are the final deliverables. When we need to revisit our work in the future, the nuances from the beliefs and discussion aren’t there, so your team can’t feel their own contribution or connection. So make your deliverable the cumulative agreements you make, not just the final positioning. Get into the habit of testing the positioning with your market and testing the belief of your team on an ongoing basis. Two ticks and you can proceed.
Any planning involving real people, with feelings, with beliefs, needs greater forethought and preparation than you expect. But remember, your job as a strategist is to prepare them to take action, by helping them to believe. The emotional alignment is as powerful a team motivator as you can ever have, so it’s always worth the effort to make it happen.
Sign up below if you’d like to receive this in your inbox next time.