Don’t walk away lightly from hidden strategic challenges to what you do and how you do it. When a client, whether internal or external, asks you to change something so it's simpler, clearer, flows in an alternate sequence, looks differently, etc., make sure you're taking advantage of the opportunities it creates! By lowering your pride of authorship and raising your excitement about an apparently simple request to make revisions, you can find incredible strategic challenges AND opportunities to force your thinking and processes into very different directions you may have never considered exploring otherwise.
An example?
We thought we’d finished a social media strategy write-up when the client asked us to move it from PowerPoint to a document format and add a few visuals. Lo and behold, what seemed initially like a couple of hours of simple revisions to the document wound up requiring several days of attention.
In the midst of the effort, we discovered the formatting change request was really a strategic challenge. To make the reformatted document work better, we wound up re-depicting one of our social media strategy models in a much clearer way. We also developed a new social media response model. Both of these creations will be tremendously valuable in further social media strategy client engagements.
Not every change request is a strategic challenge in disguise which will yield new and better work. Be sure though you're open to finding the dramatically improved ways of doing things which could be lurking in that one last revision to your strategic work. - Mike Brown
The Brainzooming Group helps make smart organizations more successful by rapidly expanding their strategic options and creating innovative plans they can efficiently implement. Email us at brainzooming@gmail.com or call 816-509-5320 to learn how we’ve developed integrated social media strategy for other brands and can do the same for yours.
