Compound learning

"How did you get this good?"

As much as I pride myself in being confident in my abilities, I shudder at the thought that I might be overrated. "This good?" That's a lot of pressure bruh.

I tend to have an answer every now and then—different every time. I always wondered what the actual answer was.

Well, I found it—somehow—yesterday.

I was reading this book, after years of procrastination, no thanks to Victor Fatanmi who has still not bought my 19th birthday gift. Lol.

"Good Strategy Bad Strategy" is the name of the book.

As I read, I looked at a brand strategy guide document I'd previously written and I saw how much I got it right. I'll tell you what I mean in a moment.

As I read, I asked questions. "What exactly is strategy?" "What would brand strategy look like based on the thoughts I have learnt from this book?" "Steve Jobs did this? How do I do it too? How do I influence it?"

Then I got the answer.

You don't just do "brand strategy". It is not one-off. It can't be one-off. What we do is a guide. Stay with me here.

Strategy exists as a plan to take your from where you are (problem) to where you want to be (goal/objective). However, it is neither the goal nor the problem definition.

When I did brand strategy and wrote mission, vision, positioning statement, etc—do you want to know what was missing? Everything! Because the business didn't have a plan to take it to its objective.

What I had done was provide them a guide—a brand strategy guide.

Why? Because for every brand problem, there exists a goal—and by extension, a specific strategy to achieve that goal. So, one organisation can have 5 brand strategies.

The twist? There can only be one guide. The guide is what we sell as brand strategists today—the document that aligns all strategies to the core of the business. No brand strategy can stray away from the guide.

The guide tells the consultant how to create a strategy for a specific problem that is true to the brand.

For example, if your guide defines your brand promise as "comfort and ease". When you want to solve a particular customer service problem, you know that your solution cannot sacrifice comfort and ease no matter what.

Like you'd expect, I also asked "so what happens to brand strategy? How do I do it?"

Well, brand strategy is pretty simple—it is at the intersection of planning, execution and measuring. Just like a war strategy isn't complete until the war is done, your brand strategy isn't finished until they've achieved their goal or failed.

I get to talk a lot more on this at my Ovalay class. I hear that I have 10 people already, and I really wouldn't want more people.

https://ovalay.com/ is the website to register if you wanted to know more.

I'll share more as I read the book.

Oh—and about compound learning—it is learning based on the knowledge you already know. It's the most effective form of learning. It's the way I have learnt.

I learn with the humility and objectivity of a child, and the experience of an adult.

That's how I "got so good".

Cheers.

Ciao.

PS:

Thanks for the love yesterday.

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