shawn | planner | veteran
Passionate about helping people become a better version of themselves.
Always looking for the next challenge.
Sports. Camping. Hiking. Snowboarding.
My Approach to Strategy
The problem is not the problem.
I don’t trust the first version of the problem. “People don’t care.” “We need awareness.” “The campaign isn’t working.” Those might be true, but they’re rarely where the interesting work starts. I like pulling at the thread until I find the tension underneath the business problem, the human problem, and the thing keeping the two apart. Finding the problem is only the beginning.
Be brutally useful.
I don’t believe strategy exists to make a presentation smarter or give everyone something nice to put on a slide. It needs to do something. Change the question. Sharpen the brief. Challenge an assumption. Give creative somewhere interesting to go. If the thinking doesn’t make the work better, what’s it for?
Find the possibility.
I’m naturally drawn to what something could become. A limitation can become a proposition. A weakness can become an advantage. A constraint can give an idea its shape. I’m less interested in asking how we fix what’s wrong than asking what becomes possible when we look at it differently.
My Laws of Strategy
1. Have a take.
Strategy isn’t an observation. It’s a position. If your thinking can’t be disagreed with, it probably isn’t saying enough.
2. Make the brief worth solving.
The brief shouldn’t simply describe the problem. It should create a tension that makes creative want to solve it.
3. Test the thinking.
Don’t fall in love with the strategy because it sounds good in a room. Build something. Put it in front of people. Find out where the thinking holds and where it breaks.
4. Make strategy worth reading.
A brilliant thought buried in 40 slides is still buried. Strategy is a creative product too. Write it like someone will actually read it.
Running list of things I can’t stop thinking about:
Whether dogs think we’re terrible at smelling things g.
How I would fix every NFL team
If a fish has ever seen a human swimming and thought what the hell is that
Shawn Sullivan 