Sam Powers, Strategy Associate
What does writing a song and creating a strategic plan have in common? On the surface, the two processes sound nothing alike. A song is a musical expression of emotion and storytelling. A strategic plan is guidance on organizational decisions and choices. One lives in the world of melody and feeling, the other in the world of goals and structure. But spend enough time in both, and the similarities start to outnumber the differences.
Choosing the Content
When writing a song, a writer has to spend real time deciding what the song is about. What are they trying to say, and how are they trying to say it? Just as important, how will an audience perceive it? The writer also has to decide who the song is for. Is it for themselves? For an existing audience? For a new audience entirely? Often, a writer is even working in someone else's voice, writing lyrics that need to sound like they came from another artist altogether.
A strategist has to ask many of the same questions. How does someone from the outside write in the voice of an organization, one that speaks to several different audiences at once? A strategic plan, like a song, has to find a single throughline that still resonates with everyone who hears it.
Fishing for Threads
Both processes involve a great deal of information collection, and both involve leaving a lot of that information on the cutting room floor. I have written hundreds of verses that I ended up abandoning. I have abandoned just as many pages, ideas, and hours of work while building a strategic plan. The process is much the same in both cases. The goal is to distill complex ideas into shorter, more concise, more efficient writing. You gather far more material than you will ever use, because the only way to find the right thread is to fish for a lot of them first.
Easy to Start, Hard to Finish
A songwriter friend of mine once told me that it is easy to write a great first verse, and that nothing is more challenging than writing a great last verse. I think about that often, because it is true of nearly any creative or strategic project. The beginning is always the easiest part. Everything is exciting at first. Every idea feels like a good idea, and the project is still a blank canvas.
As the project develops and more information comes in, everything becomes more specific. A strategist has to build puzzle pieces that fit together perfectly. Every document created needs to support every other document, and every opinion shared needs to hold up against the ones that came before it. This is exactly what good songwriting requires as well. The verses need to make sense with each other and build toward one overarching story. The hardest work is not coming up with the idea, it is completing the idea.
What Strategists Can Learn from Songwriting
“Kohelet sought to find delightful words, and to write honestly, words of truth.”
So how can strategists learn from songwriters? The first lesson is that less is more. We often hear the phrase "do not boil the ocean," meaning do not spend all of your time trying to find every last piece of information. That is an endless, fruitless quest.
When writing a song, a writer usually sets parameters at the very beginning. They choose the key, the tempo, the chords, and a rough idea of what the song is about. All of these choices are subject to change as the writing progresses, but they give the writer a framework of their own creation to work within. A good strategist does exactly the same thing. They decide on the scope of the project, the expected length, and how many rounds of edits each piece of work will take. Setting these boundaries early does not limit the work. It gives the work a shape to grow into.
A good strategist, like a good songwriter, also needs to be flexible. The framework is incredibly helpful, but knowing when to break the mold, when to think outside the box, is just as important. Rules exist to serve the work, not the other way around. The best songs are rarely the ones that follow every convention perfectly, and the best strategic plans are rarely the ones that stick rigidly to a strict template.
Understanding Where the Song Ends
A great songwriter does not just understand the music. They understand where the song will end, and they can already hear what song might come next. A great strategist needs that same instinct. It is not enough to build a plan that works in isolation. The best strategic work anticipates its own ending and leaves the organization ready for what will come next.
Creativity, in the end, is not confined to the arts. It shows up just as much in the discipline strategic planning as it does in the chorus of a great song. Both require sitting down to do the work, often starting with a blank page. Both require fishing for threads long before you know which one will matter. And both require the patience to finish well, not just the excitement to start.