Strategy lessons from parenting

One of the things that's brought the most clarity to me was being a dad, so i wrote a short piece about what strategists can learn from parents, even if you never plan on becoming one.

It all started in August 2023, where young dad me (my kid was 6 months old, she's now 3!) got interviewed by Neil Perkin for his ​Google Firestarters​ series. A career highlight being the long-standing fan of Neil's work that i am. What followed was meeting ​Adrian​, starting a ​writing project on being a dad​, and trying to grow into this role.

And to this day, i continue to believe there's a huge parallel between being a parent and a strategist. Here's why.

1. Your job is to cultivate a type of environment

Many years ago, i was at the APG Conference and heard Nils Leonard speak on stage. He said something i never forgot: a brief is how a project should feel. I loved the simplicity of this, and how it helped you think of it as more than problem, message and tone. We could define a brief by the very way in which we could solve it. And yes, this may include changing the ways of working. For example, why not brief all specialisms at the same time (heresy!).

The job of a parent is similar. It's to help cultivate certain environmental conditions for kids and family dynamics to flourish. We have very little control over many things, but the vibe of the place is one of them. For example, people say our kid is a particularly calm toddler (well, debatable, wait until you tell her no more Peppa Pig for the day). And over time we realised it was because we always made an effort to have a calming home environment.

We live in a calm neighbourhood. We don't have too much stimulus around her at any given time. SONOS is fine, TV is a rare treat, portable screens even rarer. We give her options, not orders, so we can channel attention to what she needs to do. We don't shout at her, or when we do, we apologise (we all lose control on occasion). We're trying to model the environment and response to situations we'd like her to value and adopt. It's hard work, but it all adds up.

Being a dad, and a strategist, is about cultivating the right environment. This includes language and behaviours around a situation, problem, or set of solutions. And definitely don't treat your colleagues as children.

2. Suggestion is more effective than imposition

When i was at VCCP, i listened to this great talk about ways into a creative brief. One of the questions from the audience was simple: how much creativity do you add to your own thinking? Because it varies. Some creative directors prefer a problem, others a proposition, some not a lot of stim, other tons. There's no silver bullet to it.

But one thing that all creatives respond well to is: suggest things, don't impose them. Don't force creatives to try and do an idea you think is the right one. But suggest it in such a way that they'll think there's something in it, and build it up. Sometimes, what happens is that they propose the exact thing you suggested, which is fine! It doesn't matter who came up with it. It matters there's collective buy in to it as the right thing to do. Less ego, more energy.

In parenthood, the power of suggestion is also greater than the power of imposition. Of course, imposition, or calling the authority card ("because i said so!"), can work in the short term. It provokes the right behavioural response, some of the time anyway. The problem is that, in strategy speak, it compromises the attitudinal response to you as a parent.

Calling the authority card might get kids to do what they're told, but they'll sooner or later build a reservoir of resentment around it. To be clear, it's not our job to be people pleasers to our kids. But there's evidence that giving options (which you control) still gets them to do what you want them to do. Except they actually feel good about it.

It's easy for us to assume we know best, especially if we think this because we've worked on it long enough (as a strategist), or have lived our lives long enough (as a parent). But think of it from your audience's perspective. Letting them get to an answer themselves means they are more likely to stick to it. And ultimately this is the real point.

3. Everything's scenario planning

What people misunderstand about scenario planning: it's not forecasting. It's trying to position ourselves in the best possible way for whatever happens. Preparedness over prediction, as Nassim Taleb says. This feels true in strategy. You're navigating between current constraints and future possibilities, in an environment that's frequently shifting due to market conditions, macro economic factors, or internal things like budget cuts or new acquisitions.

So, working with moving targets, our role is to navigate them as best we can. And doing so with grace, if possible.

With parenting, it's exactly the same, albeit on a different scale. Plans change when it's not just about you and your partner being ready, but your toddler too. And whether they want to put their jacket on or not. And whether they suddenly realise they needed to drop a massive poo. Or we're ready to go, and in the car, and they don't want to go anymore. Or it's not about the daily plans, it's they suddenly don't like porridge anymore.

These are things you need to plan for, in order to have an appropriate response. And imposing authority, as we've seen, has limited long-term effectiveness. At least in our parenting philosophy (yours may vary, no judgement!).

It's healthy to assume we live under an illusion of control. Because it means we get better at expecting change to be the norm, and having a rough plan of what we might do when it comes. This produces effective ways of working around strategy, but also kids' moods. Or accidents. If we assume moods and accidents are a given in everyday existence, we will probably go through things with a greater degree of sanity.

As with parenting, so too with strategy.