Outbox files: Components and Tools

Most of the coaching relationship is 1:1 sessions, collaborating on work in progress. But I get ideas off the clock too, and will often follow up with clients by email between sessions if I think it will be helpful to them. In Outbox files, I’ll share some of those emails here (with their permission of course) to give you an idea what it’s like to work with a strategy coach.

Today’s is on Components and Tools, and was designed to help a client transition from the learning phase of the project into the synthesis phase.

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Morning-

I was thinking about where you are in the project and what you’re bringing to our sessions. I’m seeing a lot of work in-stream, which is great, but it’s time to start focusing your thinking a little bit more and moving past facts. 

I threw together a little graphic to help explain (attached). You’ve probably heard me talk about strategy as a bowtie, right? You start broad and then you tighten down into the knot - the strategic idea. And from there you broaden back out with ideation and solutioning. Once you have the idea there are many ways of bringing the idea to life, or executing on it. (Normally the strategist’s work ends at the knot but the downstream work is relevant for you in this project.)

I’ve layered onto the diagram a couple of things. On the top are what I call the Components - the elements that ultimately allow you to form the strategic idea. As you work these represent less of what you see, and more of what you think. So you go from data and observations to context and insights and ultimately to hypotheses - iterations of a strategic idea that you’re turning over before you settle on one. You’re still working mostly with data and observations and I’d like to see you moving from what you see to what you think. This is the synthesis phase. If there were a black box of strategy this is it. It’s allowing your brain to flit over everything you’ve learned and find patterns, unexpected correlations and combinations, and ultimately insights.

On the bottom I’ve layered in the tools commonly used in each section. You’re still using tools for capture - blank sheets and canvases. It’s time to switch to tools that require synthesis and narrowing. There’s a reason most strategy exists in slides - if we can’t express the ideas in their narrow aperture, the ideas are not focused enough to be strategy.

So over the next couple of days I’d like you to start narrowing your focus and getting closer to the bowtie’s knot. That means pulling back on trying to learn new things and entering the synthesis phase, where you’re trying to make sense of everything you’ve learned so far. And it means shifting to tools that invite that narrowing and focus. We can talk more about this in our next session but I wanted to get it into your head before then.

-Mike