CORE Journal: The Truth About Strategy
I am writing this for 3 of you. The Designer considering diving into Strategy for their clients. The Designer wondering what this whole “Strategy Frameworks Controversy” happening in our community is all about. Finally, the Designer who is looking to improve their understanding of Strategy.
Aside from being the Author of the CORE Discovery Framework, I am an explorer, I am a seeker of truth. And here are some truths that I believe.
1.You don’t have to be a Strategist to be a successful Designer.
I have never sold a Strategy engagement on its own. (Kinda) I’ve done projects without Strategy. (Not fun) And I know many successful Designers who make a great living and who don’t do Strategy or lead projects for that matter. (They are really good at their craft and love it. And work at Apple, Spotify, and other awesome companies.) So you shouldn’t feel like you have to become a “Strategist” to be a successful Designer.
For me, Strategy or how to get from Point A to Point B is simply a part of the overall design process and I try not to make a big deal out of it. My agency was known for doing “great creative work AND strategically driven.” That is from a quote from a client. Clients still came for the creative work first. Some clients said that they had worked with Strategy Consultants but they felt like they wasted their money because they didn’t know how to translate the documents into tangible deliverables. So hey, we had a leg up we could do both. Better yet we had the autonomy and power of having defined the strategy and the brief vs getting it from someone else.
The modern evolution of Design we are in that incorporates Brand Strategy, User Experience, and Business Goals has been driven by the Digital Age. By the exponential proliferation of companies, business models, and products (and the Brands they create) at the dang speed of light. Sooooo many brands are born every day that they fill our minds like the stars in the sky at night. So when you are shooting into a crowded duck pond you gotta aim fairly confidently as to not hit the wrong ducks or — what happens most times, you don’t hit anything. (Horrible metaphor mix. Or is it an analogy mix?)
Though you don’t have to call yourself a “Strategist,” understanding it and even being able to do some of it will help you produce better results for yourself and for your clients.
Recently helping a client do a rebrand and go from being a “Product Company” to being a “Brand Company” taught me the importance of being a multi-hyphenated Designer. They asked me to play the role of Chief Brand Officer. I honestly did not know what a CBO did. So I googled it.
When I researched the definition of Chief Brand Officer I found a funny one; “A Chief Brand Officer is equal parts Creative Director, Strategist, Coach and Court Jester.”
I was like; “Yes! That is totally me.” Unpacking that one will give you some hints as to what you can call yourself. Also keep in mind that the salary difference between a Creative Director and a CBO is about 100%.
So know that as you grow and develop as a professional there are many things you will have to add to your quiver of tools. I wasn’t the best visual Designer, I wasn’t the fastest, I didn’t even like doing production. So I became a Creative Director, a leader, and an entrepreneur. So you can become any of the many unique expressions of a professional that are possible. It’s really up to YOU.
2.Strategy alone won’t make you a successful Designer.
We live in a “hyper-branded” world. Everything is now becoming “Brand Driven.” There is “Personal Branding, Consumer Packaged Goods Branding, Mutable Brands, Digital First Brands and so many other terms that leave your head spinning.
I’ve seen new Brand identities help companies and harm companies. I’ve seen great Design executions that are quickly changed by clients because they didn’t work or they ended up not liking it later or worst the customers hated it.
I know of only one constant and that is change. Markets change, people’s attitudes change, trends change, and now more than ever at breakneck speeds.
What will make you successful as a Designer is having a more powerful understanding of one simple principle; Cause and Effect. How your decisions on behalf of a client will or will not help your client reach their goals. It’s often called “prescience” — or foresight. Knowing how your work will affect your client in the future. This is not an exact science, BUT there many ways to minimize the guesswork that are rooted in the scientific method. (Hypothesis, Experiment, and Validated Learnings.)
This illustration does a great job at unpacking the quest I have been on for the last 6 years. When I started The Skool (Which is now The Futur) I saw a need to bring what I had learned from Designing Brand Driven UX Solutions for Startups to YOU. My fellow creatives. If you are still reading this it explains a lot about my intentions with CORE and The Systm.
3.There are many approaches and frameworks for Strategy.
I love Marty Neuimer, I love the Business Model Canvas, I love Design Thinking, I love User Experience. All of these have their own approaches, techniques, and outputs. Not all of them are created equal. So it’s up to you to understand and find what works for you, for the project, and to validate this with the results behind it.
But they all have one goal; Fidelity. “The degree of exactness” produced in the work. Exactness to what? Well how well your solution meets the needs of the business. In Startups (And any new business idea) the goal is not simply to launch, but also to provide value to customers and for the business to grow. One of the biggest impediments is simply agreeing on what direction to get started in or pivot into.
This is why having ANY framework to align a team or even a single founder with your own vision and their ideas really matter. Otherwise, it’s all a guessing game. A game of willpower. So personally I am agnostic to the solution. As long as I personally understand it and test it (and it produces results for me and my clients.) I really don’t care what frameworks I use. (Note: The requirement is that I learn it, use it and understand it for myself as much as possible.) This is why we recommend that all CORE users use it on their own business or personal brand first.
Another driver for me was having a Strategy framework that was tailored to my own “ADD Personality” — and to my smaller and Startup clients (Who were also super ADD.) Above all, I really HATED being a “wrist” in a dark room making stuff for a client I had no stake in them or connection to their people. I wanted to have a say in the direction of the business. Or as we say in the Dominican Republic: “Tu si eres presentao.” (Something like precocious or speaking out of turn. Like a little kid asking, “But why? But why? But why?” over and over and wanting to be in all the adult conversations.)
Why was I like this? Because I saw myself as more than just a “Nice Artist” who makes a “nice logo” for a client. If I wasn’t in the decision-making room, I wanted no part in it. Period. That is my eldest, Taurean brother personality. For those who understand Astrology and childhood development psychology.
The most important lesson of them all is that I wasn’t doing it alone! I had a team and the client had a team. So aligning all of those people was SOOOO hard. I didn’t want to be stuck in endless revisions and scope creep.
When I had to answer the “Why is your direction this or that?” I already had the framing to get my client onboard. Because they were part of it! I didn’t go up to the mountain and come back with the magic tablets. I took EVERYONE to the mountain with me to meet the magic burning bush of inspiration! (Look that one up.) So here is what we did:
1. We defined the Brand statement, together.
2. We defined the exact needs of the clients, together.
3. We defined the business goals, together.
Then we asked “is this correct Mrs. client?”
The client said “yes, with these changes.” THEN we started the visual Design process. With an aligned understanding.
It’s also important to understand that it was only the “core” of what was needed. Not EVERYTHING needed. Why did we leave anything from the kit? Like positioning, like naming, like messaging, like marketing strategy, etc. Well, we kinda did and we didn’t. If you have ever joined a webinar I’ve hosted or if you are a member of the CORE Tribe (Join and ask for anything you need.) you know I share many examples of the other tools we use to translate CORE. We also talk about how to remix the tools and other people share their process examples. This is a big part of the value of CORE. The community and the social learning.
But there is another reason why CORE doesn’t have everything, a reason that I seldom mention. And that is because it matters more to get to a test to validate your Strategy assumptions. An MVP, paper prototype, user testing, focus group, or showing it to your mom for validation.
Until tested it’s still a guess! It’s still just smart unvalidated thinking! More so Strategy can become just “theatre” if it’s not paired with tangible proof. For me, this lesson came from the experience of selling a Strategy only engagement (The one time I did it.) and having the CEO come back to say she felt like she didn’t get her money’s worth because she still didn’t have her product. (It was an online product.) I fixed this by Designing her product at a discount. She later sold the company for over 120 times the cost of the engagement. But you now you can understand my hesitation to sell Strategy on its own. I could do it, but I was positioned as an integrated practice, not as a Strategy Consultancy.
This event forced us to ask the question; “What is the least (and fastest) amount of Strategy that we can do to get started on Design and validation. (And why Stylescapes are so important.) or any sort of tangible deliverable we can validate with.”
So wherever you fall into this conversation, on the fence, pondering the conversation or tired of hearing that you HAVE to be a Strategist to be successful, know that you can position yourself in any way you would like, Strategy on its own won’t make you more successful (though it will really help.) and choosing a framework is about the community of users who will support you in your process of learning.
If you’ve been on the fence about buying CORE. Reach out with the links below. Happy to answer questions.
Jose is a graphic designer who started a YouTube channel which is now The Futur. He has always been an explorer and experimenter. CORE Discovery is one of those experiments. The hypothesis for the experiment was simple; How can the design process be made less painful and more effective? And even a little bit of fun. You can find the CORE Tribe here. You can follow me and tweet me your questions here. Or you can follow me on IG here.
