How To Hire A Strategy Advisor: 6 Traits To Look For (& What To Avoid) When Building A Great Business Strategy

The odds of getting a Monkey See, Monkey Do strategy are high.

Arrrrr! 🏴‍☠️ Welcome to a free edition of Category Pirates. Each month, we publish “mini-books” that share radically different ideas to help you design and dominate new categories. Thank you for reading. And of course, forward this mini-book to anyone who you think needs to hop aboard the Pirate ship.

---

Dear Friend, Subscriber, and Category Pirate,

It's often tough to get a company's strategy right.

We Pirates have seen this firsthand with the entrepreneurs, executives, and solopreneurs going through our Strategy Therapy course. It has been rewarding to help them refine their strategies. But it has also helped us think about why strategy is so difficult.

Here’s what we found after a lot of rum and rumination:

1. ‘Strategy’ consultants mostly sell Monkey See, Monkey Do strategy. 

2. Great strategy isn’t benchmarking the past but finding weird data that predicts the future.

3. Distilling weird data seven times gets you an incredibly simple strategy that scales. 

If you want to hire an advisor to build a great strategy, here's what we recommend:

• Don’t hire an industry specialist from a ding-dong consulting firm. 

• Look for a strategy generalist who loves weird data and values simplicity.

• Find a strategy advisor who has the following traits:

  • They love and aren’t scared of the ‘new industry/never done it’ roller coaster. 

  • They have a playbook, but aren’t afraid to toss it and freestyle. 

  • They understand conventional wisdom but are skeptical of it.

  • They aren’t one-hit wonders or coat-tail riders. 

  • They make things simpler vs. complex. 

  • Their outcomes are legit and specific. 

In this mini-mini-book on strategy consulting, we're sharing what we've learned as category design advisors—and what we've seen work well for other companies and consultants.

So grab your favorite libation and dive in.

Most ‘strategy’ consultants sell Monkey See, Monkey Do strategy. 

Pirate Christopher recently shared a brilliant article, "The Business of Strategy Consulting," by the OG strategy category designer Roger Martin.

Roger is special—not just because of his thought leadership and track record—but because he’s the rare senior partner (and solopreneur) who isn’t afraid to tell the truth about the good, the bad, and the ugly of the strategy consulting business. 

Roger Martin is a pirate who has mastered the art of fresh thinking.

In the article above, he lays out 3 key insights about the strategy of strategy consulting. 

1. McKinsey, BCG, and Bain recognized that the category of strategy consulting was small and shifted.

   • Cost cutting was bigger and had more certain and controllable outcomes. 

   • Sales force reorganization was an easy go-to move for new CEOs.

   • M&A bankers spoon-fed M&A and post-merger integration. 

   • Digital transformation was hot and evergreen with new tech.

2. Organizing around practices created scale and synergy.

   • Industry practices allowed sharing of ‘best practices’.

   • This enabled thought leadership and playbooks to scale.

   • Practices created training that got new talent up to speed faster.

   • Practices were an amazing ‘workaround’ for client confidentiality. 

3. The consulting business model is codified as case teams and competitor insights.

   • Whatever the client's problem was, you always got a case team at $1MM/month.

   • Whatever the client's question was, you solved it with competitor insights. 

Said differently: Anyone hiring McKinsey, BCG, or Bain should beware of getting a Monkey See, Monkey Do strategy—because it is big business. 

Pirate Roger summed up the strategy for “strategy consultants” as selling case teams and competitor insights. As he points out, a newly minted MBA is paid handsomely at over $200K/year but is billed out to clients at over $1MM/year at an 80% gross margin.

Roger also said strategy consulting revenue and skill set shrank at McKinsey, BCG, and Bain. (Pirate Roger estimated strategy consulting revenue to be 10-15% of McKinsey’s revenue. But another McKinsey partner said it was closer to 3%.) Even worse, the shift from a generalist consultant who did mostly strategy across a diverse set of industries to a specialist who did mostly non-strategy work in one industry meant the truest strategy skill set atrophied. 

Pirate Eddie saw this firsthand as a consultant. 

When Pirate Eddie first joined The Cambridge Group in 1999, they did growth strategy work across a wide variety of industries.

His first year’s projects were in media, financial services, and infant formula. The Cambridge Group's revenues per consultant were higher than McKinsey’s, and Pirate Eddie was learning a ton. Shortly after, The Cambridge Group did a ‘lift out’ where they hired multiple partners and their teams from the Booz Allen financial services practice. This was a strategic move to grow Cambridge and increase its foothold in financial services, which accounts for ~30% of total consulting revenue.

When Pirate Eddie was 24 years old, he started work on a project for an investment bank. 

He was responsible for sizing the market and building a growth strategy for debt capital markets in Europe. He knew nothing about this and was quite nervous. And that particular ex-Booz partner had a reputation. He was a rainmaker who was challenging to work with—but knew everyone on Wall Street. 

Pirate Eddie said, “I have no idea how to size the market for debt capital derivatives.” 

The ex-Booz partner said, “Not to worry. I got you.” He proceeded to dump a massive binder of PowerPoint slides on Pirate Eddie’s desk and said, "This will help you."

Pirate Eddie spent that entire summer flying on Sundays to either New York or London and then flying back on Fridays. The binder allowed him to create benchmarks for the percent of total assets under management the bank spent on debt capital derivatives. This allowed him to size the market for the client and get the work done. But there was a problem.

The binder was an old Booz project done for the market leader in European debt capital derivatives. 

When Pirate Eddie asked the partner if that was okay, they said, “Aren’t you looking forward to staying at the Four Seasons Canary Wharf?”

Pirate Eddie realized that much of the underpinnings of financial services (and the strategy consulting industry overall) was a Monkey See, Monkey Do strategy. This aligns with what Roger Martin says about how most top-performing companies don’t hire ‘strategy consultants.’ There’s not much to learn from companies performing worse than you.

They know what makes them great will be shared with every other competitor. 

In a flash of inspiration at 2 am on a Thursday morning, Pirate Eddie built another model with public data that was a great proxy for what the client needed. 

But he realized a few things: 

1. He understood competitor insights were why financial services was ~30% of consulting. 

2. He never wanted to feel ‘compromised’ again, so he avoided partners like that in the future. 

3. He fell in love with weird data others didn’t see. 

Great strategy isn’t about benchmarking the past. It's about finding weird data that predicts the future.

Shortly after that investment bank project, Pirate Eddie got assigned to Swingline to work with Jeff Ackerberg, the then VP of Marketing and Sales. Swingline hired Cambridge to build a growth strategy project for their stapler and hole punch business. Pirate Eddie had never worked with office products before, but he understood the power of weird data. 

He quickly found one-third of stapler/hole punch users drove 70 percent of category revenue.

He found Swingline's Superconsumers!

But the bigger insight was the Superconsumers shopped at office supply stores four to six times per month. This meant Pirate Eddie could build a far simpler growth strategy. The staplers and hole punches were already in the store, so Swingline didn't need to do much traditional marketing—it could focus on retail strategies and activation.

Distill weird data seven times, and you’ll get an incredibly simple strategy that scales. 

So Pirate Eddie started to hunt for what problems Swingline's Superconsumers faced. He asked, "Why are these Superconumers, Superconsumers?" seven times. And he saw: 

• The Supers were often administrative assistants or front-line retail workers. 

• They used staplers and hole punches exponentially more. 

• Stapler jamming happens often and is a big deal. 

• When a stapler broke, they would replace it.

• They could spend $50-$100 without asking.

• They loved heavy-duty and electric staplers.

• Which were 2-7x more expensive because these staplers did not jam. 

Pirate Eddie found the Superconsumers. He found Super-Geos in the office supply stores. He found a problem to solve with stapler jamming. And he had a willing shopper with money to spend. 

The last problem was the shopping experience itself. 

This is what the planogram/retail shelf set looked like before. 

It was a dog’s breakfast, organized by brand versus category—not by problem or POV. So, Pirate Eddie’s recommended a different strategy. He was scared to share it because he had never done it before. 

Fortunately, Jeff loved it and was supportive. 

The sales team took the new strategy and created retailer-specific selling decks with the size of prize based on their individual businesses. What unfolded was a perfect scientific experiment. Each retailer reacted differently and had disparate results 9 months post-implementation.  

• OfficeMax loved it and implemented it in 700 of 900 stores. Their heavy-duty stapler sales went up 100% and 2x the revenue. 

• Office Depot accepted and implemented it at all 12-foot planogram stores. Electric stapler sales went up 20%. The average price per unit increased 10%.

• Staples said it was silly. Superconsumers don’t exist for staplers. In the same 9-month period, their heavy-duty and electric stapler sales went down. 

Swingline’s revenue and margin increased dramatically thanks to this new strategy, and Pirate Eddie and Jeff have been friends/clients ever since. 

We can empathize with why consulting firms have practices. 

It can be nerve-wracking to work in a new industry. 

(When Pirate Eddie first started working with Anheuser Busch, a senior executive asked him, “Eddie, have you ever worked in beer or alcohol?” When Pirate Eddie said no, he got a 3-hour lecture on the history of beer.)

But the truest expression of a great consultant is the ability to provide a provocative point of view with a client you just met, in an industry you know nothing about, without a team or data in 15 minutes or less. 

That skill set is so rare, especially at most large consulting firms because the go-to move for most partners is, “Let me bring in my firm’s expert in XYZ.” This is not just for consultants. Investment bankers have practices. Private equity and venture capital are ultra-specialized. Academic ‘experts’ are the most specialized. 

Beware of the specialized expert. 

Great strategists have the following traits: 

1. They love and aren’t scared of the ‘new industry, never done it before’ roller coaster. They trust their track record across industries and verticals. They see new industries as an opportunity to learn.

2. They have a playbook, but aren’t afraid to toss it and freestyle. Great consultants build proven playbooks over time. But the greatest consultants are constantly building new playbooks. If you find someone who can’t deviate from their playbook, be careful. It’s likely they didn’t build the playbook. The odds of getting a Monkey See, Monkey Do strategy are high.

3. They understand and are skeptical of conventional wisdom. They know it reflects the present and the past. They are more fascinated by and interested in the future.

4. They aren’t one-hit wonders or coattail riders. A lot of successful folks are one-hit wonders that haven’t repeated their success. More are coattail riders who were adjacent to but not responsible for success. Be very careful, and vet folks carefully. 

5. They make things simpler vs. complex. Great strategy is incredibly simple. Simplicity is velocity because it is easy to remember and repeat—and things that are easy to remember and repeat scale faster and bigger. Execution is the way to drive outcomes. Simpler strategy = easier execution.

6. Their outcomes are legit and specific. When you hire a consulting firm, they'll tell you their track record. You need to probe carefully to see if the consultants were directly involved in those outcomes or if they're touting the firm’s outcomes. The outcomes must be specific in insight, strategy, execution, timing, and financial outcomes. The strategy advisors who have legit outcomes have no shortage of other clients raving and recommending them personally and for their specific superpowers. 

Strategy matters. Choose your advisors wisely.

Arrrrrrr,

Category Pirates

Eddie Yoon

Christopher Lochhead

Katrina Kirsch

PS: Help like-minded pirates “think different.”

If reading this opened your mind to new and different thinking, share it with a friend or click the ❤️ button on this post so more people can learn about Category Pirates.

PPS: Create a simple one-page business strategy.

Most companies don’t need to hire strategy consultants—they just need 3 things to get their strategy right: brutal honesty, courage, and clarity. You’ll get all 3 (and access to live workshops with us Pirates) in our self-paced Strategy Therapy course. Learn more and enroll here.