Episode Details
Back to EpisodesBlair Enns - What Is Strategy?
Description
The lovely and talented Blair Enns joins me to explore the question: WHAT IS STRATEGY?
BLAIR'S LINKS
INTERACTIVE TRANSCRIPT
TEXT TRANSCRIPT
Jonathan (00:00): Hello and welcome to ditching hourly. I'm Jonathan Stark. And today I am joined by a very special guest Blair ends. Blair, welcome back to the show. Thank you, Jonathan. Great to be here. So I feel like you need no introduction, but can I put you on the spot and for anybody who hasn't heard your name before you maybe give them a, a quick name, rank and serial number. Yeah,
Blair (00:22): Name rank. So I'm the founder and CEO of win without pitching the sales training organization for creative professionals. I've written two books the win without pitching manifesto in 2010 and pricing creativity, a guide to profit beyond the billable hour in 2018, three years ago.
Jonathan (00:47): Great stuff. Love it. Okay. So the, the sort of impetus for this conversation was a tweet that you tweeted, obviously something you posted on Twitter about strategy. So what's the, what's the sort of backstory here.
Blair (01:01): Yeah. And I forget exactly what the exchange was, but you and I were trading some pretty good definitions of strategy. One of my hobbies is I collect answers to the question, what is strategy? Because strategy is one of those words, like time and money are in the same category. They're they're words. We think we know the meaning of them until we're asked to define them. And then it turns out very few people have satisfactory answers to the question of what is strategy. And then when you get into that, then it's, it begs all kinds of other questions around this topic of strategy. So it's a rich vein for a podcast episode that's for sure.
Jonathan (01:43): Absolutely. Well, so what are some of the answers that you've collected? I mean, do, do you feel like there are, do you feel like they sort of coalesce around a correct answer or is it just like people have different definitions and if it works for them great. What do you, what do you, what are your findings?
Blair (02:03): I I've, I've asked hundreds of people this question, and I've asked it from a stage, you know, many times as well. So, you know, easily, I've heard hundreds of answers where, or in excess of 100 answers. And the most common answer is just an insufficient answer is an answer that, that says this person hasn't thought about the question, which isn't, you know, I'm, I'm sure there, there are a hundred words that I think I know the definition to that. If you ask me to define, I couldn't have a strategy, is, is one of those words. Usually the answer is some variation of a really smart plan. But the origin of the question why I first started asking it was so win without pitching is a training company, but we used to be, we used to be me a solo consulting practice. And I used to hear from my clients a lot.
Blair (02:53): So creatives who have made their creativity, their business. So some designers starts at design firm. I used to hear from my clients when they were talking about their competitors, they would say, Oh, they're a really good firm, but they don't do strategy. Meaning they're not as smart as we are. Right. And so I started asking what strategy and people were just absolutely flummoxed by the question. So the answer is, tend to coalesce around a plan. Well, let's stra