Fidelity versus bloat

We need those at the sharp end of things to actively want to enact the strategy and make it real in the world. And we want them to help make strategy as robust and fit for purpose as possible. So human beings being what they are, bias, ego and politics will invariably need to be navigated. Things will get messy, if not downright chaotic, from time to time. This is an unavoidable fact of the strategist’s life. But being open to input also comes with the very real possibility of strategy drift or dilution. When strategy and the building of high fidelity brands derives its potency from choice, focus, and coherence.

Strategy drift happens when people start changing what might at first seem small components of a strategy because with the best of intentions, they need to feel they are adding value. It is easy to become so focused on responding to the input and feedback and making it to the next stage that the process and product veers wildly off track. What starts out as simple and focused can become some horrific, lumbering (and occasionally downright comedic) Frankenstein, the original intent long forgotten. Worse, strategy drift happens when people who have up until now been light years removed from the development of strategy start appearing on Zoom calls and in Google comments weighing in with their pet peeves, biases, language preferences, or allergies. Or yet worse, when others second guess what they think the preferences and biases of those higher up the food chain might be.

All this can be an unavoidable fact of the strategist’s life, and it would be naive to wish away the challenges of navigating strategy through complex organisations. This shit is not for the thin-skinned or the faint of heart. That said, rather than just bitch about it on LinkedIn, we can deliberately and consciously work and build with strategic integrity in mind, and help ourselves - and crucially, those we serve - in two ways.

First, we can make the cost of performative meddling overwhelmingly prohibitive and craft and express strategy with ruthless elegance. Onions, pyramids, keys, prisms and whole panoply of geometric-shape-as-brand-strategy are not our friend in this. They’re the enemy of elegance and an open invitation to vapid bullshit. Brevity is not enough. We can make something short and still ship something ugly. Or stupid. Or inefficient. Or devoid of intent. Or lacking in taste. But elegance is different. Being the result of choice, rightness and fit, elegance exposes thoughtless fuckery and destructive, performative tinkering. Utterly coherent and composed only of what matters, elegance ensures that even if one element is amended, interpreted, removed or substituted, then the whole thing comes crashing down in broad and humbling daylight.

The second thing we can do is simply call bullshit. Or time. Calling time when one is knee deep in the process and often no longer able to see the wood for the trees is difficult, to say the least. Nobody wants to be the person who pulls the emergency cord and have the often lengthy and arduous process grind to a halt when so-called success is within sight. But we must have the objectivity, clarity, will, and courage to call time when things start to go pear-shaped and while things can be still recovered. So it helps to have clear escalation protocols in place before strategic work is commenced. Problems can often not be resolved within the system that created them. You want to be able to call in a C-suite airstrike on bullshit if the need arises. But you need to pre-wire that precious resource.

In the development of strategy we must stay alert for drift and bloat - and work to inoculate strategy against thoughtless (if well-intentioned) meddling. Surrendering the integrity and fidelity of our strategy is not an acceptable price to pay for playing nicely and allowing for input and collaboration. So be open to high quality input but make the price of mere meddling steep. And enlist in advance the support of somebody able to drop the hammer should the need arise. Honestly it’s not complicated. It just needs some clear-sighted intentionality.