Strategy is a system
So, let's ask a question that promises to ruffle some feathers: is strategy an art? Or a science? Or is it, like I increasingly believe it to be, a system? Well, I'm gonna argue for the system thing here, and you can't stop me. Though I'm working through this, so by all means do build or challenge.
Maybe it's because I've been spending more time working with cross-market organisations, or maybe it's the fact that they tend to be very product and service-oriented, but I increasingly see clients buy systems.
When you read this, you may immediately think, "we're so fucked and this industry is so fucked". But that's not how I read it at all. I read it as something that is simply a characteristic of how organisations work. We don't blame audiences for not buying into an idea or advertising execution. And yet, we're so judge to client organisations when they do it. It's weird.
Creativity killers, except maybe no
The classic (fake?) dichotomy of something being creative or systematic feels like nonsense to me. A lot of the strategic process is about defining a framework that can help facilitate decision making, within which you can then add as much creativity as the framework allows.
So, the problem isn't that the system exists, it's that some systems are too rigid and some are not clear enough. If you make a conscious decision that your top of the funnel activity exists to communicate your range through emotional stories, and your mid to lower funnel exists to communicate individual product benefits through unexpected demos, this is a system.
But no one would question the existence of a system, they just need reassurance they can still incorporate some elements of creative thinking within the rules that system has set. Systems and rules scare creative people, but the way I see them, they keep a lot of wolves at the door.
What we sell vs what gets bought
Let's look at it through another lens. A system is something that enables an idea to be bought, and so without a clear system of decision-making you may struggle to sell the best ideas. Again, it sounds like a critique, but in 15 years in this game, I've met maybe two client organisations which buy ideas in the absence of executions and rationale. This is valuable, but rare.
Now, here we have a decision to make. We can bemoan the death of our industry or the erosion of taste or how people are not brave. There's plenty of that out there. Or, we can do the more grown-up thing and actually take responsibility for how we sell ideas, by adjusting the selling process to the audience that's buying, which in this case is our clients and their bosses.
In simple terms, a clear system for how you sell something can be the difference between that thing being sold. "Great ideas sell themselves" is perhaps one of the most damaging myths we've created about our work. Not only is it not true, it's terrible for morale when ideas don't get bought.
Why? Because the implied message is that you didn't have a great idea, otherwise it would have 'sold itself'. But a lot of the wastage that comes from the amount of creative work that doesn't get bought isn't because that work wasn't good. Instead, the conditions to buy it weren't right yet.
Conditions may include things like team structure, individual and shared agendas, leadership styles, past corporate trauma that gets triggered by certain words or references, limitations or unexpected decisions that affect available marketing budgets, and – oh so often – the time just wasn't right.
But for all these factors, you need a better understanding of how corporations, systems themselves, buy ideas and things. Agencies like VCCP are very good at understanding the process through which ideas get bought and sold in large organisations. They're good at selling as a system.
Systems reduce early stage strategy nausea
Now, let's go back to strategy. Because while there is a strategy for selling, when you're selling strategy or creativity in itself it may feel like this system stuff doesn't apply as much. It's just above any systematisation.
Yeah, except no. Blame frameworks however you want, but they help you organise your mind as you tackle through a problem. When you have a messy brief, or you're working in a new category you've never really worked on before, it helps to have a system to help you get started.
The 4 Cs framework, which agencies like Droga5 use, is a system for organising a strategy story, but also to organise all the research chaos you will inevitably go through. The same thing goes for the Truth Triangle framework, which is used by VCCP and certainly has been used by AMV. Or the Disruption model that TBWA made famous. And so on.
These are all systems, though I struggle with stretching them to 'proprietary models' as if clients really cared about that. Proprietary models help clients feel reassured, but I actually see them as a point of parity. It sucks to not have one. But it's not the decisive factor if you do.
Anyway, my point is that these frameworks are perhaps not as useful for the system of selling, but they're useful as hell to organise strategic thinking. What matters, of course, is the stuff you then load into them.
Systems maximise your odds of anything
The way we browse WARC's campaign finder tells us something useful about the other elements through which strategy is born out of systems. There are only so many ways to write a commercial or comms objective. There are only so many ways to define a comms strategy. And so on.
Pattern recognition is another, fancier, way to say experience, but it's more descriptive of the systemic nature of that experience. To be experienced in something is to recognise a system you've vaguely seen before. So, an experienced strategist is just someone who's better at spotting systems.
And when you have a collection of systems, which is also what experience gives you, you now have more ways through which you can slot a problem in a mental model. Is this a 4 Cs kind of strategic response? Or is it a more specific 'everyone does this so we think you should do that' response? Are we in a position to say something different, or can we win by saying it differently? These are all simple systems. But they help improve your odds of getting to a good definition of a problem, and ways to solve it.
Even creativity, and this is where maybe I lose the rest of you, has some systemic components to it as well. I don't mean to say with this that it's a predictable system (it's not), because it's not deterministic. But, like AI, it's probabilistic. Systemic practices grow your odds of finding a good idea.
If you write 10 versions of a headline, your odds of getting to a good line go up. This is a system. If you argue that you need at least two in-depth discussions around a strategic territory with the whole team before you can feel confident in them, this is a system. It's a system that recognises the need for re-writing, but also the need for some ideas to sit with you.
You know when a strategy you got to is deceivingly simple, and you wonder where was all this clarity three weeks ago? I get this all the time. And then I remember. All of this is a byproduct of the system of strategy. You need a system that encourages lots of re-writing and refining things.
To truly know something takes time
Knowledge isn't just in the mind, it's encoded in the body too, and the system through which you do that encoding is exposure to information, but also assimilation of that information and growth in how confidently and intuitively you 'get it'. This is where a lot of AI hacks fall short.
In other words, the more you sit with something and kick it around, the greater your odds of thinking clearly about it. Because you don't just know it because you read it, it becomes a feeling thing and you can't unsee it now. When you can lay down a strategic argument without any slides or supporting material, this is a great sign. It's a sign you truly know that shit.
One last note on systems for writing, to say... I don't have one. When I hosted my workshop on writing with the Salmon Crew, I consciously made it about people's inner barriers, more than specific tactics or techniques, though there were a few of those. Broadly, my 'system' is:
Absorb a lot throughout my days and throughout my week
Think of a one-sentence thing that keeps coming to me
Sit down for about an hour to write from the gut
Revisit the next day for another hour to edit for clarity
Avoid trying to have a 'thesis' but more a series of good points
It's literally how I wrote this thing, which you may argue could do with more editing or a clearer macro structure, but my system has baked in the rule that I'd rather be exploratory than structured. At least for a first pass.
What inevitably tends to happen with this system is that, off the back of the first exploratory piece, some sentences then stick with me some more. And then I develop a pithier way of thinking about them, which either leads to another piece (step 2) or another editing trick later on (step 4).
The first thing is never the final thing
In other words, the system through which I operate when I write expects the first thing I write to never be the final thing I write. Instead, it's a stepping stone to clearer ideas and expressions of those ideas later on. Like all systems, it has trade-offs, but consciously knowing the trade-offs you're accepting and working with is the mark of any good system.
I recently got into a drumming rabbit hole on YouTube (don't ask), and am obsessed with the Drumeo channel. They do two things I love: they get famous drummers to learn other famous drummers' songs. Or they get famous drummers to try to guess the drum rhythms of other famous songs.
In both of these, what's fascinating is to see different drummers' ways of dealing with what is fundamentally a situation determined by uncertainty.
You see someone like Domino Santantonio immerse herself in Slipknot (minus the drums) and with each take getting a higher fidelity version of what the drums might sound like. Her system is hugely instinctive, she just gets started and works it out as she goes, and gets better with each take.
Or you see a Mike Portnoy try to learn the infinitely intricate drumming decisions that Tool's Danny Carey put into 'Pneuma', and for the first 15 minutes of seeing him process the song he keeps talking about 'cracking the code'. He's taking notes. He's solving an equation. He knows Tool keeps changing the rules of the equation, but the rules do exist. And until he totally gets those components right, he's not willing to start playing.
The difference in processes is not as interesting as the notion that they both follow a system born out of repetition, just different inputs go into that system because they are different tasks. But observing the mental systems of artists is another way to feel reassured that systemic thinking is not a barrier to creativity, it just sets the scene for creativity to flourish.
'Best' is contextual
Which takes me back to my original point. Strategy, like systems, is about understanding the different variables at play in a particular context, and how focusing on some variables introduces trade-offs with other variables.
In that sense, there is no notion of a 'best strategy', just the most appropriate one for a particular context. Which leads to a deeper point around the problem with 'best practices' as a way to 'not lose', as opposed to a way to win, which is what strategy is always ultimately about.
So whenever someone gets into another silly LinkedIn argument about strategy as an art or as a science (do those still exist?), I will most certainly ignore it because I have better things to do. But in my mind, and riffing on a Kevin Kelly-ism here, I like going for a third option. Strategy is finding a system. Just not a rigid one. Find which one suits the job, and go all in.
Ps. It would be extremely arrogant of me to consider this the last word on the topic. If anything it's the first few words on it. I will keep coming back to it but want to make it more high fidelity, each time. So please challenge or question or build on any of this by emailing me. We all win if you do.
