Seth Godin recently wrote about how, as an MBA student at Stanford, he went into an interview with the CEO of Activision waving a Harvard Business Review (HBR) article and claiming Activision was in danger of succumbing to the Marketing myopia described in the article. Godin says he was just about to be thrown out of the CEO’s office when someone came in waving a report that Activision had 9 of the top 10 video games on sale at the time.

By the time the CEO came back to his office, he forgot why he was angry with Godin and offered him the job. But Godin said the time he spent cooling his heels convinced him he was right about Activision being too focused on making games for the Atari console.

Godin tells this story as an introduction to a HBR piece he wrote about strategy myopia His main point is that strategy deals with uncomfortable uncertainty based on questions about what the future may hold based on how technology, society, and other factors are unfolding. The tactics and plans a company embrace need to derive from the strategy, which again, holds no concrete promises.

In part this myopia comes from what we expect from a new strategy. Strategy is not a plan. A plan might come with a guarantee: “If we do this, we win.” A strategy, on the other hand, comes with the motto: “This might not work.” Strategy is a philosophy of becoming, a chance to create the conditions to enable the change we seek to make in the world.

When the boss demands a strategy that comes with certainty and proof, we’re likely to settle for a collection of chores, tasks, and tactics, which is not the same as an elegant, resilient strategy. To do strategy right, we need to lean into possibility.

What really caught my attention was a passage that echoes the on going conversation about arts marketing being focused on the product being sold rather than the audience/consumer. (my emphasis)

Strategy myopia occurs when we fail to identify who we seek to serve, and focus on what we seek to produce instead. Empathy gives us a strategic advantage.

A tactical, short-term focus is based on the past. We can try to defend the machines and processes already in place, working to maximize the assets we’ve got. Or we can visualize the customer and serve their needs as the world changes.

[…]

Empathy begins with the humility to acknowledge that you don’t know what others know, want what they want, or believe what they believe … and that’s okay. If we’re not prepared to move to where our customers are hoping to go, it’s unlikely that they’ll care enough to adopt what we care about.