Strategy & Empathy
Introducing Claire Strickett
Friends,
I hope that all is well with you and yours, and that this e-mail finds you on a boat with shoddy connection, in the tropics, three months after I sent it.
A couple of updates before we go-go
With only a few days to go until James and I speak at the Cannes Lions Festival, my schedule is becoming rather full. As of right now, we only have time for a late drink at our hotel on Tuesday June 20, and a breakfast chat on Thursday June 22. If you want to book either slot, or will be in the area and just want to say hi in-between meetings, let me know.
Without giving anything away, we will be talking about what is currently happening in the world and what the implications are likely to be for brands and marketers alike. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for us, that is not going to be what most seem to believe.
In the meantime, it gives me great pleasure to introduce today’s fantastic guest writer: Claire Strickett. The newsletter is, as always, split in such a way that the main text is available for everyone, with additional practical takeaways available to premium subscribers below the paywall. Let us get into it.
Why strategy is nothing without empathy
Depth beneath the surface
There are probably many occasions when you’ve found yourself presenting a recommendation you were convinced was strategically, rationally, completely sound, solid and utterly necessary, to a stakeholder or colleague who, despite your very best efforts, remained utterly unmoved by your argument. No matter how many pieces of evidence, charts and graphs, data points and learned sources you threw at them, something just didn’t land.
The founder and CEO who didn’t want to hear that when it comes to growing a brand, penetration trumps loyalty and fandom. The product owner who didn’t want to listen to the market research which showed that their target consumer wasn’t interested in the product they were hoping to launch. The head of visual identity who just wasn’t interested in the evidence about their brand’s distinctive assets and which they should be using consistently, and to what degree.
The three examples above are just some of the first that come to mind when I think about my own such experiences over the years, working in brand strategy.
Some of the time, of course, you - and I! - simply weren’t as right as we thought we were, lacked critical business context, and so on. But there are times when, even looked at through the most modest lens, we absolutely were right. It can be wildly frustrating, to say the least; not just because our project goes off course, or because poor choices get made or continue to play out without our recommended intervention, but because on a personal and interpersonal level, it’s baffling. Why can this incredibly smart, thoughtful, senior person, whose goals are aligned with ours, and who we’re trying our best to help, not seem to hear, let alone agree to, the case we’re making?
The full answer to that question would fill books, and more than that, would vary wildly by each individual case. (Sometimes, it can even be nefarious - biases and power structures, conscious and unconscious, can play a role.) I certainly haven’t got to a stage in my career where I have the answer, let alone the solution, every time. But if there’s one small step forward I’ve made when it comes to these situations, it’s this realisation: when you find yourself locking horns with someone, it’s not enough to be able to prove why your strategy is right. You need to understand why it matters so much to the person you’re trying to convince that they think you’re wrong.
Sometimes that’s because you disagree about facts, figures and data, or their interpretation. But more often than I once realised, it’s about how your way of looking at the world makes them feel.
We like to think that the world of business is a rational one, just as we like to imagine humans as rational actors in most walks of life. Feelings are irrational and unreliable things that we tell ourselves don’t belong in the boardroom. But that’s mostly a fiction, or at least only a small part of the story, as far as I’m concerned.
Alongside my day job, I’m currently undertaking an introductory course in counselling and psychotherapy. The tiny amount I’ve learned so far has barely scratched the surface of this vast and complex world, which encompasses a multitude of theoretical models, practices and schools of thought, and where years of training are required to become even slightly proficient - so I’m certainly not in a position to start dishing out advice on this subject in any meaningful way. But, be it classical Freudian psychoanalysis, the embodied practice of Gestalt, or the philosophically-informed school of Existential psychotherapy, all are underpinned by an understanding that our behaviour in any given moment is only partly about the actual situation, interaction or decision immediately in front of us, and a great deal about what lies beneath the surface - informed by formative past experiences, by our anxieties and fears, even if they may seem irrational or misplaced to others, or by the coping mechanisms we’ve put in place to protect ourselves from situations that make us feel threatened and afraid. And this fundamental lens is one that I believe can be invaluable when applied to tricky business conversations, too.
That isn’t to say that you shouldn’t approach your work with a rational, analytical mindset, and do all the due diligence on backing up your recommendations. To be clear, this is not a suggestion to present a plan to your CEO purely on the basis that you feel good about it. Nor is it a suggestion that you indulge in amateur psychoanalysis of your stakeholders, entertaining as that might be. Rather, it’s to say that if you find you’re talking at mysterious cross-purposes, or that your points simply aren’t landing the way they should, doubling down on purely rational arguments can sometimes be the equivalent of struggling in quicksand. Fighting feelings with facts alone can make people feel unheard and disrespected, even if they don’t quite realise why (something most of us will recognise from our personal relationships all too well), and it can leave you having conversations at a level that ultimately miss the real heart of the disagreement - and which, therefore, don’t touch on the real potential levers of change.
In the case of the early-mentioned examples, I came to realise that for a founder who had worked unbelievably hard to build a business based on sharing his passion with the world, it was actually downright depressing to consider that the future of his business lay in selling to people for whom it wasn’t a passion - just an occasional, barely considered, good-enough choice. It made him feel, deep down, like all that graft and sacrifice had been for naught, and that was a profoundly unpleasant feeling for him to sit with. Pearls before swine, if you will, although he wouldn’t have put it in such stark terms. No wonder he didn’t want to take my recommendation on board! Once I realised that this was what lay at the heart of our disagreement - something that couldn’t be overcome with any number of citations, models or case studies - I could craft my case differently. The fact was that our new, broader target audience were just never going to think as deeply about his product as he did, or be as passionate about it as the tight kernel of early adopters and loyal fans who had got the business to where it was. But that didn’t mean that they weren’t going to enjoy the time they spent with his company, or would be less appreciative of his product, when they did choose it - something we could demonstrate by reviewing the data we held on customer service and experience scores of light users. That, along with some other tweaks, helped us make our case. But the biggest unlock of all, frankly, lay in bringing a more empathetic and less belligerent attitude to the conversation, something that unfolded naturally out of a deeper understanding of the feelings and fears that were driving it.
Businesses are, ultimately, just made up of people, and people are complex, layered and often vulnerable creatures, no matter how big their title. That goes for me and for you too, of course. No matter how acute our analytical approach, how learned or expert we are, or how solid our strategy, paying closer heed to the human undercurrents that shape decision-making can pay dividends, and smooth the path to influence.
This newsletter continues below with additional insights exclusive to premium subscribers. To unlock them, an e-book, and a number of lovely perks, merely click the button below. If you would rather try the free version first, click here instead.