Do you want to show up more creatively for your clients and your colleagues, your family, and your friends?
Do you want to default to thinking about opportunity versus focusing just on problems?
Discovering Hope is full of proactive steps you can take right now, to achieve a more positive mindset or to help maintain the positivity you already have
Getting Positive reveals that more optimism is close at hand
Cogratulations to Mariana Crespo, Empathy Award Winner
A big thanks as ever to Enrique (Henry) Ahumada, for making the NY Strategic Planning bootcamp happen.The Future for Strategic Planning Careers is Positive
COVID-19 has brought to the fore an emphasis on cash flow and short term results. In such times, those that can sell and those that understand consumers, aka strategic planners, see their stock rise significantly and this will carry forward post COVID.
The crisis has accelerated the use by client and agency alike of digital tools. The great thing about digital initiatives is that they are easily trackable. The brilliant thing about this combined trackability with qualitative understanding, is that brands have a powerful ability to impact sales.
Post COVID-19 one lasting impact will be a continued realignment to short term sales initiatives. That said, the smart clients and brands will demand big picture/longer term creative thinking. They will insist that a strategic vision for building brands aligns with and optimises short term marketing efforts and that the team ‘thinks like a brand but act like a retailer.’
Career Options For Strategists Are Greater Than Ever
I’m often nervously asked by planners/strategists where else beyond the agency they could work. Fifteen years ago the options were much more limited primarily to research agency or freelance. Today after so many years of strategists being hired, the pathway to client-side is much smoother. Similarly the pathway to brand consultancies, PR, innovation, media and ‘big tech’ are well worn. There are also opportunities working with big consultancies although they have been heading to the agency world, so perhaps no move necessary! Not to overstate the obvious, any business that needs to understand it’s consumers can use a strategist. The one caveat to all this positivity, the more integrated (qual+quant’) the strategist, the greater the opportunties.
Happy to discuss,
Stuart
Some past newsletters that got plenty of interest.
Humor and Brand Building – bit.ly/3iNjNzK
Impostor Syndrome – bit.ly/3k6P1D2
- Future of Strategy 2020: Opportunities in a Post-Pandemic World
- From Surviving to Thriving: Reimagining The Post-COVID-19
- Business Strategic Planning During the Pandemic:What’s Changed
- Thinking Strategically About Your Career Development
- Transferrable Skills Analysis
- Strategic Planning and the Big Impact of SMALL Data
Better Q’s = Better Answers
Basic facts are must haves, but better questions demand thought, from interviewor and interviewee alike and ‘often’ lead to better understanding. Try:
Don’t ask her how much she wants to make, ask her how she wants to grow
Don’t ask him where he wants to work, ask him what he wants to experience
Don’t ask them about a typical day, clarify which skills they want to focus on using
Don’t ask me what I’m looking for. Ask me what a dream scenario might be.
#Betterquestions + #BasicFacts = #Cleardirection
The Strategist I’m Told to Identify
The ‘ideal’ strategist I’m typically asked to identify:
A true empath – so is equipped to understand/connect with colleagues, consumers and clients alike
A sense maker/connector of disparate ideas – culturally savvy
Openness – To all people and ways of thinking – is genuinely open-minded and so able to understand and incorporate the spectrum of perspectives.
#jobsearch #corestrength #employable
Strategists – Jobs Outlook – Reasons for Some Optimism
For those of you strategists that don’t have jobs and are worried about your prospects, some context and encouragement based on the many interactions I have had and continue to have today, May 18th:
1. New business activity – Despite furloughs and layoffs, far from being in survival mode, there are plenty of agencies actively pitching new business and I am hearing repeatedly from those working telling me there’s plenty of activity.
2. Stretched Teams – I’m also being told that teams, prior to covid that were running lean, are now running extremely lean meaning, any incremental business will lead to hiring, which I suspect in many cases will be flexi/freelance.
3. More varied consumer spending – As the un-lockdown does begin to gain momentum, consumers spending money on a broader range of goods and services give a broader range of clients more confidence (it’s all relative) to begin to start spending again. #staypositive #newBusiness # #inthistogether