The strategist sits at the heart of the organization; is it any wonder your colleagues look to you for leadership? What are the traits that make a strategist a good leader, and how do you best provide that leadership as a strategist? Think back to what we’ve defined as the role of the strategist. The overarching responsibility of the strategist is to drive the thinking, ideas … Continue reading Episode 94: Leading As A Digital Strategist
It’s a nebulous and subjective thing. Who decides what great work looks like, and why? What’s more, we aren’t creative directors. We are digital strategists. Our work isn’t designed to inspire, amuse or move. Our work is designed to perform. So before you launch, and until you have results that validate your strategy, how can you know if your work is great? A while back … Continue reading Episode 93: The Work: The 5 Elements To Know What Great Looks Like
Bringing order to chaos. Simplicity to complexity. Vision to practicality. The strategist is there to align stakeholders, solve problems and achieve ambitious objectives. But doing so is not a straightforward task. Not unless you have a strategic framework to depend on. A strategic framework is a visualization of the components that make up the strategy, their relative position to each other, and the way they … Continue reading Episode 92: Digital Strategy Frameworks
The spoken word. It connects in ways that the written does not. Maybe that is why the podcast, an old delivery platform that many thought was past its prime, is enjoying such a revival. The podcast allows us to tell stories, provide context and connect on a human level, and it holds a very important place in the role of an integrated digital strategy. Serial changed … Continue reading Episode 91: A Great Story Well Told – The Digital Strategy Podcast
You have an aggressive annual objective. You need an innovative strategy to achieve it. But each week you take on developing your strategy represents 2% of your year, and sets you that much further behind your goal. You now have a steeper hill to climb, and in less time. How do you square the requirement to spend an appropriate amount of time researching and planning, … Continue reading Episode 90: The Need For Speed – Growth Hacking Your Way To Success
‘If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea’. Writer, poet and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s beautifully articulated perspective on motivating people gives us insight into the role of the visionary. But what does it mean to be one, why is it important to … Continue reading Episode 89: The Digital Strategist As Visionary
Strategy is not about immediate impact, but rather about long term achievement of ambitious objectives. It doesn’t constantly change; if it did then it wouldn’t be strategy. So once the strategy is set, and the implementation begins, is there a role for the strategist? I believe the strategist is critical for the successful execution of a strategy once it launches because they fulfill 3 key … Continue reading Episode 88: The Long And Winding Road – The Post-Launch Role Of The Strategist
“I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think”. This quote from Socrates, articulated over 2,000 years ago, sits at the heart of the teaching method he created, the Socratic Method. This debate driven approach to challenging ideas and finding common ground is as valid today in the context of the work of the strategist as it was in the classical age. Nothing … Continue reading Episode 87: Challenge Everything – Applying Socratic Method To Digital Strategy
“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe”. Abraham Lincoln served as the 16th President of the United States until his assassination in 1865. During his time as President, he led the nation through one of the most traumatic experiences in its history, the Civil War. A deeply astute politician, Lincoln was a frontiersman … Continue reading Episode 86: Team Of Rivals: The Strategic Lessons of Lincoln
Artificial intelligence. Machine learning. Cognitive computing. The robots are coming, and they are going to have a profound impact on our industry. But don’t despair. Don’t give up. Don’t rage against the machine. Prepare yourself for their arrival, because the age of automation needs the strategist more than ever. What was last year’s big data is this year’s machine learning. I can’t sit through a … Continue reading Episode 85: I, Robot – Strategy In The Age Of Automation
Octopus Digital Strategy 