How the Right Strategy can Positively Impact Everything
What does the word ‘strategy’ make you think of? Do you think of which pitcher you want on the mound in the bottom ninth inning of game seven of the World Series? Do you think of your plot to get your children in bed before midnight? Is it the presentation you’re preparing to pitch a new client?
No matter the example, we all think of something when we see the word strategy. It’s a popular term of late, too. Where strategies of old might have been reserved for military affairs or how to achieve a political advantage, the term has become as popular in our homes as it is in the boardroom. Strategies are how we approach many of the everyday issues in our lives.
How can we choose the right areas to implement strategies? How can we start thinking strategically to tackle our aims in life and work? It starts with understanding which type of strategic opportunities to look for, and which to avoid.
Some Strategies Have Domino Effects
Don’t Think Like an Elephant by George Lakoff is categorized as a political activism book for progressives to understand how conservatives frame issues. Whether you fall on the left or right of the political spectrum, the book is a quick crash course on the importance of framing issues. Lakoff has been coined by many as “the father of framing” and he’s often the left’s go-to for how to frame an argument that can be won long-term. But inside of his book of political know-how are strategies we can use in the everyday, especially if your profession depends on winning a frame — which is most jobs. Everyone from television news, corporate communications, to sales needs to learn how to frame and win.
Toward the beginning of the book there’s a simple definition about a strategic initiative. According to Lakoff it is: “A plan in which a change in one carefully chosen issue area has automatic effects over many, many, many other issue areas.”
Implications here are different in politics, business, or at an individual level. But the idea is this. Whatever isolated area we fix has a trickle down effect. Various other areas will be solved for, too. This intensifies depending on which original isolated area you chose, making choices important, because a domino effect could ensue. If you target one issue, you could be left with improvement in several different areas. How many areas depends on the strategic initiative that was chosen.
Here’s an example. Consider a diet fix. It doesn’t only have implications on your physical health. The fix may affect how much energy you have, providing a greater ability to focus at work. The last few years we’ve learned how gut health regulates mood, so an improved diet may put you in better spirits. If you’re in better spirits, you may get better sleep and have better interactions with loved ones and coworkers. A diet could also save you money. That means more income for entertainment and extra curricular activities, resulting in an improved social life and time spent outside of the office. Diet is an example of a strategic initiative because its improvement can fix more than one thing.
What are the implications of this at home and work? What seemingly simple adjustment can you make that will have a trickle down effect across multiple areas? Maybe a simple change like getting rid of television will bring the family closer, save money, get kids learning and reading, thus preparing them for college.
What about at work? Maybe changing the format of meetings brings your team closer together and gives an unspoken colleague the chance to share ideas they’ve been sitting on. Maybe this new meeting format makes the team feel more comfortable around their managers and that causes everyone’s work to improve.
In whatever area we’re operating in, the right strategic initiative can affect change across the board.
Don’t Choose a Strategy that Lets You Slip
If a strategic initiative saves you in many areas, it would make sense that there is an opposite. A type of strategy that works in reverse and actually causes problems. Lakoff calls this a slippery slope initiative. Here’s how he defines it: “Take the first step and you’re on your way off the cliff.”
That might sound radical. But it isn’t far fetched. We know that a user of hard drugs might cause damage across multiple areas of his life — finances, family, relationships, work — and this could have been avoided by never making that decision. (I’m sticking to the objective act of hard drugs being taken. We’ll save philosophical arguments of free will or socioeconomic causes for another day.)
So where are slippery slopes possible? Have we accounted for all of them? How about leaving a job too soon? Saying the wrong thing to your boss? Losing your temper during an important meeting? Missing an important detail during a new hire process? Couldn’t these seemingly minor scenarios affect the job at hand and have lasting repercussions?
Nike — a company I wear, like and respect — had a famous error that might have caused grievances across many areas — otherwise a slippery slope initiative. When Stephen Curry’s shoe contract was ending in 2013, the company had a chance to retain him before he ended up leaving for Under Armour. In their pitch meeting, which was written about wonderfully by Ethan Sherwood Strauss of ESPN, Nike made big mistakes. They started the pitch meeting by pronouncing Curry’s name wrong. They followed that by showing Curry a PowerPoint deck that had Kevin Durant’s name on it. These errors contributed to Curry’s decision to move on from Nike.
It’s speculated that Nike didn’t want to keep Curry. But they could have done so for less than $4 million a year. Imagine what these mistakes may have cost Nike over the long-term? As of a 2016 article by Forbes, Curry provides $14-billion in market-cap value for Under Armour. And that’s just the financial side. In what other ways does Curry affect business? It’s reasonable that Nike didn’t foresee Curry becoming the star that he is today, but retaining him would have likely affected many areas of their business.
As we can see, successfully strategizing isn’t just about identifying where strategic initiatives or slippery slopes live, but also having the ability to execute or avoid disaster when we realize them. We could be closer to a breakthrough or hanging on the edge of chaos than we think.
I like how clinical psychologist and professor Jordan Peterson worded a piece of strategic advice in one of his class lectures online. He told the students, “Life isn’t a game, it’s a set of games. And the rule is, never sacrifice victory across the set of games for victory in one game.” He elaborated further on why a person should act morally, which is a type of strategic approach, when he said, “to act morally is not to win today’s contest at the expense of other contests.” This is crucial advice to adhere too as we move forward with our own plans. (Whether morality should be implemented for the sake of strategy or morality itself is a topic for another day, too. I for one think doing the right thing should be done for the sole fact that it’s the right thing to do. )
Don’t Forget to Play Offense
Further on in Don’t Think Like an Elephant, Lakoff advises to ‘Play Offense, Not Defense.’ That’s crucial. Once we start thinking strategically, we might get too caught up in our own heads and forget to act. We might hesitate and forget to play offense. How often are we guarding ourselves from what could go wrong so much that we forget to attack what could go right?
Instead of always focusing on budgeting and sticking to a strict financial plan, why not start focusing on ways to side hustle? Instead of over planning, why not study and get to work putting ideas you have into action? Instead of trying to find the perfect workout, why not just get out there and do any one of them?
On New Year’s I wrote that my resolution is application. We all usually know what we should be doing, it’s just a matter of doing it. Planning and brainstorming is useful, but it isn’t offense. Getting in the action and doing is offense.
It’s simple. But how often do we forget that we have got to get out there and try to score? Like the quote from hockey legend Wayne Gretzky that you’ve probably heard before goes, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
So get to strategizing. But play offense, too.
