Scrambling to get work “to a good place” before sharing it out is commonplace among strategists. And justifiable - who likes to be secretly judged? But vulnerability, trust and growth are connected.

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.

Strategies have shapes. Or they should anyway. Because at its core a strategy is a story. And the purpose of strategy is not to be right, or find a path, or even to prove something. Ultimately a strategy’s role is to drive action. That means inspiring its audience with confidence that overcomes objections and inertia. A perfect job for a good story.

Strategists are usually defined by their discipline - business, brand, creative, product, content, etc. This is their Vertical specialization, and this specialization becomes deeper with experience. But there is another part of the strategist skill set - a collection of skills common to all strategists - Horizontal aptitude.

One of the epiphanies I had as a strategy team leader was when I realized the way I had been managing some of the people on my team was not just unhelpful to their skills development, but was actively thwarting it. Maybe you’ve seen this: a strategist is the primary resource on a project and they struggle a bit with it. They’re not comfortable with the ambiguity, and maybe are having a hard time envisioning their process, and the end goal. So their manager leans in and tells them what to do in order to keep the project on timeline.