Guide #010: How to demystify strategy work and elevate its role within your agency or in-house creative team

View the project Strategist, either in title or role on a team, as someone who creates transparent and inclusive processes that allow the full team to participate in strategy work. This approach shifts the role of a Strategist from someone who develops strategic ideas to someone who creates the conditions on a team for a successful strategy to emerge. For example, a Strategist might host synthesis sessions where research materials — interviews, data, customer insights, etc. — can be shared with the entire team while acting as a facilitator to harness team reactions in a format that can add value throughout the entire project.

As strategy is openly discussed within a project team, the role of the Strategist should be one of listening and pattern recognition. The “strategy person,” regardless of their official title, should constantly be on the lookout for themes, recurring language, consistent pain points, and a shared vision. This is also the goal as research is conducted, artifacts and data are analyzed, and as input or feedback is solicited from stakeholders, customers, users, etc.

Strategy work requires an environment that is conducive to nurturing infant ideas. Individuals exposed to strategy work should guard against being overly critical too early while providing the appropriate level of feedback to push ideas forward. Coaching the team to develop and maintain an environment that nurtures infant ideas should be a primary responsibility of the “strategy person.” As early ideas get shared, the “strategy person” should pay attention to their stickiness. How well do these ideas resonate with others? Are they repeated, reinterpreted, or built upon by others? Can these ideas be tied to larger initiatives or concepts? Are they in line with stakeholder values? Do they support a storytelling narrative?

When presenting strategy work to stakeholders, rather than treat it as a separate deliverable, present it within the context of tactical deliverables. This helps ground strategic ideas with practical examples of how they will come to fruition within the real world. In addition, anchoring conversations in the business problems being solved or user behaviors being encouraged, for example, will focus stakeholders on providing the most valuable feedback.