What makes a great strategy professional? (I hesitate to even use the word strategist anymore, there are so many striations. Planners, strategists, account leads, consultants, thinker. If you’re a knowledge worker, you’re a strategy professional.) This question comes up a lot, in conversation, interviews and LinkedIn threads.
For a long time, when asked this question, I would say ‘curiosity.’ The willingness or drive to really dig in and gain the deep knowledge about the challenge to be solved and following the leads that emerge to learn more. More than who, though? How much is enough?
In a conversation I had last year with a film critic, he talked about all the knowledge he had prior to watching and critiquing a film, that helped him synthesize his thoughts. In his work, he’s not able to share 150 slides. He’s lucky to get 700 words.
Insight: Most research ends with a set of recommendations, with the most common recommendation being more research.
Curiosity is not enough, and may be totally misguided. The better measure is how the person applies knowledge to the assignment. How do they take information they have and inform a solution. So many strategy professionals (and the flawed infrastructure around them) have been turned into expensive book reports.
If you’ve ever hired a consulting firm, you’ve experienced this. Slides and slides of frameworks and data points, but palpable fear of forecast based recommendations. The value is extremely limited, but the work is hard to critique. There’s nothing in the deck (decks?) that can be rejected, so the investment can’t be considered totally bad.
Ask yourself, is that enough for you? Is that what you want. Start with a hypothetical set of solutions, on day one. Based on knowing nearly nothing, what could you do? As you research (with your intrepid curiosity!) rule out and promote those ideas. Guide your curiosity away from strict collection and towards outcomes.
I promise the strategy professionals you look up to the most are more focused on applying knowledge to solutions than they are to never-ending research. There value is not in all that they know, it is in their willingness to apply the most useful part of all that they know.