No Love for Strategists?
I recently found myself explaining to a colleague why I keep a print of René Magritte’s The Treachery of Images hanging prominently above my desk. I certainly don’t have a profound intellectual appreciation for Belgian surrealism, nor can I speak more than fourteen words of French. This hangs alone to remind me of something.
In English, the subtitle reads, “This is not a pipe.” Many people who see this for the first time think Magritte was just being intentionally ironic — of course it’s a pipe! But it’s not; it’s an image of a pipe. Hardly as useful when you need a smoke.
I bought this print long before Bob Hoffman penned this vivid denunciation of strategists. I’m not sure what meeting Bob walked out of that pushed him over the brink, but I would have to describe his state of mind as “highly motivated.”
And he’s got a point. Talk is cheap. Strategy without execution is futile. (You may recall IBM’s Buzzword Bingo spot imploring us to “stop talking; start doing.”) People came out of the woodwork to commend his post in the comments.
But one comment caught my eye, and captured exactly what (to me, as a *cough* strategist) the discussion is all about:
as a former ad strategist, i actually love this. but i’ll also add that business needs DOERS who THINK. there’s a whole lot of doing going on, but not enough of what’s DONE is GREAT.
Plato called these individuals philosopher-kings – “thinkers as well as practitioners” in the words of Ken Roman – and suggested that only people such as these should we trust to lead us.
Thinking, or talking, without doing is meaningless — that’s all Bob’s trying to say. Talking about social media is not social media. The Treachery of Images reminds me of this on a daily basis.
Doing without thinking — well, ask Tropicana about that. There’s a role for strategists yet.
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Wonder if Bob’s going to fire the strategist his own agency employs: “James is a business and marketing strategist with over twenty years of experience leading national and international marketing and advertising companies.”
(http://www.hoffmanlewis.com/who_we_are.htm)