In a conversation last week, I made the comment without thinking that:
Strategy is built on marketing and stories; tactics is built on actions and deliverables.
Since then, the thought keeps popping back in my head. I’ve talked a lot about being able to tell stories before as it’s a concept I really believe in. Stories have protagonists and antagonists. They have plots and climaxes. They allow people to use their imagination and see the end result in a way that facts and figures can’t do.
Marketing is just taking the ability to tell a story and using it to get people to do the thing you are pushing for. Good marketers put their ideas into a frame that allows the person across from them to really see themselves in the proposed future state and happier than they are now.
Most strategy is predicated on getting someone in leadership to buy into your picture of the future. If they allow you to do thing 1, 2 and 3 then they get outcome 1, 2 and 3 which are good for them for reasons a, b and c. The formula has been around for millennia. Putting it into action still requires skill and expertise.
The best strategists are often the people that are the worst with numbers. Anyone who relies on numbers to sell their vision is trying to use a crutch to get out of telling a compelling story. Stats should be part of a good story, but most people get turned off by numbers. It’s commonly known that a good statistician can find numbers to support any argument they want to make.
Learn to tell stories. Focus on telling stories. If you can’t sell your strategy without the numbers, you probably don’t have the right solution yet. The numbers should be the icing on the cake, not the cake itself.