Learning to Speak Strategy

It took me four years to learn how to speak strategy. And probably another four before I felt like I spoke it well. I know that might sound slow, but the truth is, I’ve now been at it for close to 15 years and still find myself occasionally grasping for words.?

My linguistic journey started 15 years ago when I arrived at Leo Burnett as a social strategist. I had already been in the industry for a couple years working in account services. Like someone learning French when they already know Spanish, working in accounts meant that I already knew a few strategy words, but this was my first real job as a strategist. And truth be told, during the interview process I was probably less than entirely honest about just how limited my vocabulary was.?

The good news is I was a quick learner, and the even better news - the news for which I count myself fortunate to this day - is that I had one of the finest teachers in the world. Brent Nelsen, the Chief Strategy Officer at Leo at the time, spoke, and continues to speak, strategy with an eloquence that I’ve found to be unparalleled to this day. Brent has an incredible ability to articulate strategy in a way that is as simple as it is smart. Not an easy feat. Rather than impress with his words, he would impress with his thinking which was always expressed simply, but persuasively.?

And I loved listening to him talk. Within days of joining the agency I was convinced of his brilliance and determined that my own path to becoming a legitimate strategist was through gleaning as much of that brilliance as I could. So I decided to spend as much time in close proximity to Brent as possible in hopes that through sheer osmosis I would absorb a small portion of what he seemed to have in excess.?

Brent was very generous with his time, but he was also very busy. I couldn’t rely on only learning from him when we interacted one on one. And while I would occasionally find myself in a meeting with him, because of how senior he was and how junior I was, this was a rare treat. More often than not I would learn through listening to him talk around the office - to other strategists, creatives, account people, sometimes clients.?

And there were lots of other smart people around me to learn from. All the strategists shared an office so I would spend big chunks of my days just listening to everyone talk, all while trying to build my own vocabulary with their words. For much of those first four years, when I would speak in meetings it was other people’s words coming out of my mouth. Of course, over time I started adding my own words and my own ideas, but for a long time I was impersonating a strategist - or at least, that’s how I felt.????

When my son was learning to talk, I was advised to not just talk to him but to describe the things I was doing as I was doing them. In other words, I shouldn’t simply have a transactional approach to communication where every time I open my mouth it’s with the intent of conveying a specific piece of information. Instead, I should always be talking and in doing so he would hear me talking a lot more and would more quickly grow his vocabulary and pick up on context.?

And for me, that’s the difference between Zoom and in-person. On Zoom, communication becomes transactional - I set up a meeting to talk about a thing. But in person we are exposed to a much broader range of conversations that might not be deemed Zoom-worthy, but are perhaps even more valuable to the developing mind. In a busy office we are much more frequently exposed to conversations about the process of getting to the thing versus just the thing itself.??

I write this post in part as a love letter to strategy -? I feel grateful to have found myself (more by accident than by design TBH) in a career where I often get to talk about things I might find myself talking about even if I wasn’t getting paid to do it. And I still find myself enamoured with the language of strategy when done well. Crafting and delivering simple but persuasive stories is still one of my favourite parts of the job. Perhaps second only to seeing my team craft and tell their own.?

But this is also a love letter to physical spaces and the people who populate them. A big part of why I’ve always loved advertising is that it’s allowed me to spend many of my working hours surrounded by interesting people who are often saying really interesting things. It’s not that you can’t be productive when working remotely, you can. Maybe even more productive. But it’s a lot less fun.

One of the things I missed most working remotely was the intoxicating hum of a busy agency. It’s a unique cacophony that I didn’t realize how much I enjoyed till I lost it, then two years later rediscovered it. At first that hum might sound chaotic, but hiding within the chaos are many of the building blocks to becoming successful at your craft. In between the meetings there are valuable lessons being handed out all around us, we just need to listen.