Mike May, your strategy coach

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A brief history

I’ve spent over 25 years working as a strategist and managing strategy teams - brand, business, social, content, marketing, digital, product, research, and analytics. I don’t consider my specialist at any one discipline, but I’ve been an effective strategist because I got good at the horizontal capabilities that every strategist needs. Things like insight identification, narrative development, executive persuasion, comfort with ambiguity. I also learned how my own brain works - which is perhaps the greatest strategist career hack. It’s one of the first things I teach people I coach.

Like a lot of you, I’ve worked alone for much of the time. I remember when I first got the idea for strategy coaching. I saw creative teams working in duos, and how that collaboration didn’t just result in great work - it looked like a hell of a lot more fun. My envy eventually turned to inspiration and I began to roll out a similar model in my strategy team. The rest is history. Or will be, eventually.

Some actual credentials

If you’d like more specific credentials please read the following paragraphs out loud in your best panel moderator’s voice:

In a strategy career spanning decades, Mike has worked with dozens of brands - from AARP to Zynga - and has personally managed or coached over 100 strategists, marketers and analysts. He has appeared as an industry expert on CNN, ABC News, CBS News and Bloomberg TV, and has been quoted in The Economist, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and People Magazine. He has spoken at SXSW and The 3% Conference and been a guest speaker at VCU Brandcenter. Mike is also an accomplished thought leader, with over 200 published articles and research reports.

Before launching the Strategy Coach Company Mike was a GVP of Strategy at Huge, running a cross-functional team of strategists in Huge’s SE region. He has been a Vice President at the IAB, a Senior Analyst and Research Director at Jupiter Communications (now part of Forrester Research) and founded and ran a marketing and strategy consultancy called The Acorn Group. He is also an award-winning marketer from his time at Avon Products, where he pioneered e-commerce for the global beauty brand. As a hobby, he has run a successful e-commerce business in the bicycle industry since 2010.

When he’s not on Zoom you might find Mike racing mountain bikes, searching out independent coffee shops across the Mid-Atlantic by motorcycle, or making dinner. He has degrees from Colgate University, The University of British Columbia and NYU.

Connect with Mike on LinkedIn.

My coaching philosophy

  • Professional development 2.0

    Professional development for strategists - when it exists at all - is usually some combination of team training, online courses and a modest conference budget. They work, but 1-on-1 coaching simply works better. Strategists develop more quickly through real-time personalized feedback. And our focus on billable work in progress doesn’t require them to devote their evenings and weekends to improve their craft.

  • Kinetic coaching

    The heart of our program is what we call Kinetic Coaching - offering real-time feedback on actual work in progress. It’s the difference between watching a YouTube video on how to hit a golf ball, and having a PGA professional watching you take a swing, making immediate corrections, and then watching the next one. Kinetic Coaching is designed to improve the strategists craft, skills and effectiveness. The higher quality work that results is the outcome of this work.

  • Horizontal capabilities emphasis

    There are horizontal and vertical aspects to every strategy role. The vertical are the various disciplines, or flavors of strategy - business, brand, creative, product and so on. Here, experience and specialization have the biggest impact on effectiveness. But regardless of vertical discipline, there are horizontal skills all good strategists must possess: insight identification, narrative development, data fluency, executive persuasion, comfort with ambiguity. It is these horizontal areas we most focus on coaching. They are the foundation for successful strategy regardless of discipline, and a prerequisite to success in any specialization.

  • Personalized, individual, 1-on-1

    The Strategy Coach Company does not employ a curriculum-based approach to skills development. Every strategist who comes to us has different strengths and development areas. More importantly, they have different experiences, attitudes, ways of working and ways of thinking. How we coach presentation style for example could be very different if the strategist is an introvert or is prone to imposter syndrome. A project’s pace and cadence can vary if someone is neurodivergent. Coaching is listening as much as instructing. And while core strategy principles and frameworks are consistent, the way we teach strategists to integrate and employ them necessarily varies.

  • Ascent acceleration

    Unlike executive coaching programs, our services are designed for all levels of strategists. We believe targeted development of craft and personal skills benefit strategists (and their employers) most while they are still ascending in their careers, not when they’ve already reached the top.

Convinced?

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