How Can I Help?

If we were to meet, you could ask me to teach you. You could ask me to coach you on the best strategies for your product, for your organization, for the various aspects of your business.

But I won’t.          

Not that I can’t do what you ask. I can. I’ve been in the educational business for over a decade, I’ve worked with trainers and coaches and lecturers and industry experts and now the educational arm is beginning new directives, so of course I do know the value of coaching.  

But the thing is, by the time you and I meet, you are already at war.

And you have no time to search for a coach.

What you need, when we meet, is a strategist.

One who asks probing questions to determine the organization’s state of ‘health’.

One who helps the leadership identify all of the options available to the organization.

One who decides which of those options are best to rule out, and which are best to pursue.

One who researches and reviews the findings with the leadership to help them establish a plan and then most importantly, solidify proactive, workable, relevant actions necessary to achieve their desired goals.

A Warfare Tactical Expert, that's what a strategist is, according to the Chinese texts found in Sun Tzu’s Art of War, a 战略家. 战 in Chinese means War- a situation you’re already in. What is a strategist supposed to do when there’s a war? Here’s the second character 略 which means Tactics. So, a strategist is someone you hire to develop tactics when you are at War. Good. But, who should you choose? Here the full word puts it in place for you. The character 家 suggests that he is an Expert. 

When you and I meet, you’re likely wondering to yourself how the heck you got here. You were doing everything right. You had the business functions firmly in place. You were managing it all so well. There was a friggin’ hell lot to do and it was all so optimistic. But there is no seemingly clear direction for further growth… and the costs aren’t stopping.

Or say, you’re in a situation whereby you’re pretty sure that getting the word out will generate customer interest and business revenue, and you’re willing to pump in the needed resources for sales, marketing and media communications. 
You are sure and you are not sure and you think... I need a coach. 
What a coach will do, is to be a (quick look at Chinese texts again) 教练. He will be the one who teaches (教) you and practices (练) with you every day. He will teach you and train you how to utilize all the tactics above. Which is a good thing, except that it takes time, it takes more than two or three meetings, it takes a coaching session, homework, another coaching session, more homework, more revision and another coaching session etc. etc .
You don’t have the liberty of time.

What you need right then is a strategist, a 战略家.

“Do you know where your marketplace is? Do you know who your market is? What are they? Who are they? Why should they buy you? What do you have that they will want? Is this all you’re going to do? What makes you think they’ll look at you? Why should they look at you? Is this your strategy, no, not your communications strategy, your overall strategy? Aren’t you deviating from your strategy? What are you gonna do if you deviate from it? What do you mean it will not happen? What if it happens? What are you going to do? Do you know what to do?”

And what he will say after all that is, that plunging deep into the tactics of SEO, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr or any other marketing and media platform without a proper overall strategy in place is akin to seeing your money, manpower, effort and time go down the drain.

A strategist is not a cheerleader nor a hand clapper. A strategist doesnt praise you nor affirm you. I don't. Instead I would probably challenge you with enough annoying, seemingly insulting questions to force you to forget the operations for a while and start asking yourself the necessary questions again. I don’t necessarily know your business, but truth is, you’ve got the answers. I just ask the questions and with your answers, I’d identify the possible avenues of growth. There will be a few meetings, of course, but I won’t stop there when all of us leave the meeting room. I’ll go away after the brainstorming session, assemble the relevant team guys, turn the information and ideas into something real, communicate it to you and execute it.