Strategy Is Not a Checkbox. It Is a Craft.

Here we are again.

A few months ago, I shared a post asking people to stop casually throwing “strategy” into their CVs. You know the type. Two years in the industry, a few decks under their belt, and suddenly “strategist” next to “social media content wizard” and “client servicing expert”.

Now, it is worse.

Not just candidates inflating their titles, but agencies themselves. Especially the smaller ones.

Many now genuinely believe account managers can “strategise” on the side. As if strategy is a quick brainstorm or a neatly copied template. As if strategy is something you bolt onto a campaign instead of building it from the ground up.

It is lazy. And it is dangerous.

Because here is what happens: campaigns start looking the same. Pitches get lost. Clients leave. Teams burn out trying to cover gaps they were never meant to fill.

Strategy is not a task. It is a discipline.

You do not wake up one day and decide to “do strategy.” You spend years making the wrong calls, asking the wrong questions, sitting in the room after everyone else leaves, pulling apart briefs until they bleed. You do your five years in the trenches. Then maybe, just maybe, you start to be able to think beyond yourself and your deck.

Strategy is lived, not learnt in a course.

It takes minimum five to seven years to build the foundation. Not two. Not three. Real strategists have scar tissue. They have defended a thought process to a room that wanted easier answers. They have said no when everyone else was nodding along. They have lived through the consequences of a bad call and corrected it without hiding.

When agencies undervalue strategy, they gamble with everything: client trust, creative output, reputation, revenue.

You cannot shortcut experience. You cannot template thinking. And you cannot “task” strategy to someone who has not lived enough of the work to recognise what is missing.

And here is the new virus: people who do anything but strategy applying for strategy jobs, desperate enough to accept any salary just to get their foot in the door. They will tell you they can “think strategically” because they scheduled a few posts or managed a pitch once. They will smile, nod, undercut, and agree to any offer.

They are not doing it because they care about strategy. They are doing it because they want a shortcut. They want the title without earning the scars.

Hiring them is not “giving someone a chance.” It is shooting your agency in the foot.

If you think your account manager can “do strategy” because they are clever, you deserve every piece of mediocre work and client loss coming your way.

Agencies need to wake up.

Strategy is not where you save money. It is where you protect it.

And if you are a two-year-in account executive: you are not a strategist. Yet.

You do not get there by ticking a box. You get there by grinding, studying, failing, and standing up again. You get there by learning to think when everyone else is panicking.

Get in the trenches. Stay there. Learn. Bleed a little.

Then come talk to us.