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Strategy consultants and agencies often have a bad reputation.
Sometimes they deserve it. But sometimes they don't.
The cliché (and some stereotypes exist for a reason) is that consultants and agencies recommend strategies that the company cannot implement. The proposed changes could be too complex, disruptive, expensive or time-consuming and therefore impractical.
Of course, consultants often recommend a step-by-step or “crawl, walk, run” approach. But even then, management may not be fully on board, the team may not be enthusiastic, or everything may seem so different that doubts are raised about the value of the strategy.
You may have heard jokes based on this experience. One says that marketing strategies are measured by the weight of the report (a variation of this is how loudly it hits the table when dropped from a certain height). Another says that corporate marketing managers have bookshelves full of strategies that were never implemented.
Why does this happen? Marketing teams often complain that the consultant didn't understand the reality of their situation (or even the brief). Consultants and agencies claim the client “doesn't get it” or “wasn't ready for an optimal strategy.”
And there is the word: optimal.
You see, in these situations both sides are right and both are wrong.
The author of that optimal strategy probably didn't understand the realities of the marketing team's situation or history. And the marketing team was probably unwilling or unable to implement the optimal strategy as planned.
That's the point: No strategy consultant or agency would develop a suboptimal strategy that takes into account the client's current capabilities. After all, no client has ever gone to a consultant or agency and said, “Forget about optimal. We're not that talented. We need a plan that's just good enough.”
The mistake lies in assuming that the optimal strategy is always better than “good enough”.
Sometimes it is not so.
Does culture really eat strategy for breakfast?
I recently worked with a 30-person marketing team at a technology company. Most of the team members have been with the company for years and have developed a special way of working together.
Two marketing managers recently left the company and two new managers joined.
The new leaders wanted new processes, workflows and measurement methods to manage all the moving parts of their digital marketing. And they implemented these changes with a top-down approach.
Narrator: “It didn’t end well.”
When I reviewed their plan, I found it was beautifully designed. It was correct. The strategy was sound. It was optimal.
But the team seemed unable to make this happen.
Why? Well, there were so many changes and such a different way of working that the team was simply overwhelmed.
Some people weren't convinced by the plan. Some were on board but didn't feel able to make some of the decisions that would be needed. And some were so busy keeping everything running that they couldn't imagine spending time learning a whole new way of working.
It was a perfect example of business guru Peter Drucker’s famous quote: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
Although Drucker did not say these exact words (but something pretty close), this statement is often misunderstood and portrayed as an obstacle to optimal strategy.
Drucker wrote in a 1991 Wall Street Journal column titled “Don't Change the Culture—Use It!” that “culture, however defined, is uniquely enduring.” So if you need to change something, “don't change the culture. Change the habits.”
He believed that implementing a strategy depended on ensuring that the people involved would change their habits to fit the strategy. And, as he wrote, “Behavior change only works if it can be grounded in the existing 'culture.'”
Story Map – Your better plan
It is important to develop the optimal strategic plan. Different people have different ideas about what is “optimal,” but the best place to start is to aim for the right plan, regardless of constraints, current capabilities, or culture.
But the most important thing is what comes next.
When you review the plan, consider what would work best. You may need to slow down or remove items to make the goal achievable.
You need to take the time and effort to figure out how to improve the “optimal” plan by scaling it back, changing it, or adapting it to your current situation.
In my book, Content Marketing Strategy, I explain the story mapping approach I've used with my clients for years, which involves reviewing each optimal strategy and then trying to figure out what makes it realistic—and ultimately better—by reducing optimization.
Here is a brief summary of how it works:
- Allow yourself to feel the uncertainty. It's usually not the uncertainty of the success of the “big, bold goal” that triggers anxiety – it's the emotions that overwhelm people. Embrace it. List all the things that scare you and could go wrong. Then list the ones that could go right or spark joy. Then acknowledge that the future is uncertain. You can't control how you feel, but you can control how you react.
- Plan everything. Start by describing what success would look like. Then ask yourself, “What needs to happen for this success to happen?” Write it all down. It may still be overwhelming, but you'll be surprised at how calming this step can be.
- Prepare for different outcomes and contexts. Look at your list of things that need to be true and ask yourself what might be getting in the way. List everything. Then ask, “What are the big things?” In other words, what things, if left unaddressed, would destroy the foundation of the entire project?
Now that you have defined priorities (and non-priorities), you can use them to make the plan more realistic, achievable, or credible for the teams involved.
When I ran this process for my technology company client, they agreed on some new top-down processes. Was it necessary to have a new fixed process for this thing that wasn't really broken? It seemed optimal on paper, but the disruptions potentially outweighed the benefits.
By de-optimizing the strategy, the team improved it and it works well today.
People are not machines
It is a metaphorical trap to think of a company as a machine that needs to be constantly optimized. Organizations are collections of people who perform at their best when they are encouraged.
Today's marketing teams aren't successful because they've been optimized through mechanical adjustments. They're successful because their success is fueled by relationships and shared goals.
Sometimes you can (and should) disable optimization.
It's your story. Tell it well
Robert Rose consults and runs workshops to help marketing teams adapt their marketing processes to all kinds of technologies – including generative AI. Contact him to learn more about these programs.
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Cover photo by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute
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