STRAT_SCRAPS vol 154

why do you need me?

I was trying to scan a document and instead this happened. Neat.

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The most important question I have learned to ask during the past 15 months of running a freelance business is “why do you need me?”

Sometimes people need your hands.
They need help creating a tangible part of the process. A deck, a creative brief. A strategy.
This is the most common type of engagement but also the most dangerous if the work is entirely on the behalf of someone else’s mind.

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Sometimes people need your mind.
Research, category positioning, comms planning or creative provocations. This is the work many Strategy people aspire for. To be given a question and to come back later with the answer.
This is the second most common type of engagement and can be really fun work – but is easily contaminated by caveats and politics outside your control. By rounds of review and dressing up of simple ideas for internal buy in.

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Sometimes people need your presence.
You are hired for your thoughts, suggestions, feedback, and dialogue. You are hired to speak up and to disagree. To admit when you’re wrong and be pleasantly stubborn when you aren’t. To be a partner in thought. To be a steward of change or implementation. This is where your hands and your mind come together in service of the work and support of the client.
This is a less common type of work, and if expectations aren’t explicit, it is most difficult. In-house roles seldom encourage dissent and as freelancers, our stake in the outcome is limited, yet our interest in maintaining positive work relationships is high, which may deter us from pushing back.

This is the work that is worth doing and ultimately most fulfilling.

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Sometimes the real value is in the comments. Not usually. but sometimes.

A quote from a great comment on this substack post “the making of a historian”

“They often end up orienting professional clout not around doing-the-thing-we-ultimately-want-to-do but doing-the-thing-that-distinguishes-us-the-most-distinctive-way-possible.

Thus poets don't write pleasing poetry. They write the kind of poetry that will best impress other poets. REAL poetry exists outside the market, and so in some ways market success is a mark against a poem being good qua poetry. Thus academics don't necessarily seek public approval, or even a 'correct' view of the world, but instead seek to win at internal academic status games.”

Sounds a bit like strategists tbh…

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ABOVE: A quote from this incredible list¹

50 things I know

ANOTHER COUPLE BANGERS FROM THE LIST

• Conflict avoidance slowly rots your whole life.

• Don’t ask yourself where your true gifts lie. Ask what other people seem weirdly bad at.

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To humanize means to include the good and the bad

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How you say something conveys just as much (if not more) than what you say…

Yet we approve or kill creative ideas almost entirely based on what they will say.

At best, we have a verbal description of how it’ll say it, which is the equivalent of a text-only book of landscapes.

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“The Proactive pitch”

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How to do cool stuff. A book for teachers and students on how to do cool stuff. It is specifically for drawing students, but a more broad version would be a really cool coffee table book.

How to make jam.
How to build a chair
How to be more present in the moment
How to make 10 different types of paper airplane.

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A Gallery of accidental art. Digital or analog. This would be neat

There’s got to be a brand out there that this would be a good fit for.

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I’ve noticed a lot of tan trucks. Are there people who work in truck companies, responsible for color trends? Like does Ford have a seasonal truck color consultant?

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The concept of the “hidden curriculum” is super interesting in a work context.

AND FINALLY (WEEKLY MONSTER)>>

A tiny sculpture piece about being paid to think.

1. The god stuff was a bit of a turn off, but the rest of it excused the proselytizing