At the Intersection of Strategy and Production

It's one hell of a spot to be.

April 2024, Downtown Kansas City. An Intersection of Railroads.

I find myself here, used to the daily grind, the side hustles, and the journalism training that taught me in a time when we were told we couldn't simply be reporters – we were going to have to do it all.

"Gone are the days you can simply interview and write," professors would say, reminiscing on simpler times while warning we nervous 20-year-olds about the current order. "These days, you must photograph, film, graphic design, web design, screen write, event plan, influence, and audio."

The good news for me is that I generally liked doing all of those things. I love writing, recording, and talking to people. I love art and design. In middle school, I wanted to be a successful YouTuber as a legitimate career path. I loved making my portfolio website from scratch, and I loved taking a professional development course on animation and motion graphics. Over time, through the encouragement of colleagues and professors, I became, only semi-ironically, a "Jane of All Trades." Then I became a teacher and began sharing all of those skills with the next generation.

It became unspoken, the knowledge that you had to do it all. I don't necessarily remember lecturing on the "then and now" within the industry (though it's certainly possible that I did). Kids in today's journalism classrooms are simply taught to photograph, design, write, layout, and leverage social media from the get-go. And as the educator of all those things, I felt the need to do it all as well. Teaching with examples is important to me.

That all came with a personal shift.

For much of my life, I've felt that if you can't do the thing yourself, then you really shouldn't be the one strategizing on it.

The strategic jobs can feel inflated — higher pay going to someone who, if asked to create the website, couldn't do it, but is also the person who told you that the scroll on one particular page should animate "more buoyantly." What does that even mean? And if you're telling me to do it, why don't you just do it yourself?

This is the frustration, I realized, that can come with working with picky clients and bad bosses.

Circling back to teaching...I dearly hope that I wasn't a bad boss. I know at times that I was perhaps demanding, but I learned in that role to explain things. Yes, I could photograph, design, write, interview, etc., but I couldn't make a yearbook all by myself. I couldn't put out the issues of the newspaper. I wouldn't want to do that. I was, instead, the strategist.

I built relationships with kids who had their own interests, talents, and lives, and I tried to teach teamwork and develop a system that worked for production. I stepped in to help when something just wasn't looking right, and I worked to offer up real solutions.

I watched some new leaders stand next to a peer, tell them they hated the color they chose for a spread, and then walk away. Then I'd explain, "You can't just say you dislike something arbitrary and then walk away. Explain everything. Offer a solution. You may find that you're lost in the power of providing opinion."

They go back to the peer and say, "I like the photos you chose, and I can see that you pulled this color from the trees and grass on the field, but right now those colors look a little bit like Shrek. Could we try a more vibrant green or pull from something else entirely?" Now they've got it.

I still think that I did well in that role as a strategist because I was able to do everything I was asking my students to do.

And maybe that's it.

My newest role has "marketing strategist" in the title. I've got this knee-jerk, "down-with-the-man" attitude about strategizing, which makes me feel like production is of more immediate value, though strategy is more satisfying to my soul. Strategy takes time, production takes energy.

Always, my main goal is to be of service. Production provides a clear path to immediate service. Strategy involves taking a breath, evaluating systems, making friends, and pitching smaller moves that could make a bigger difference. It may be simpler to bust out an Instagram post or pull together a YouTube intro, but fixing a problem or providing programming on a larger scale will always feel bigger and better.

The bias is still there, if I'm honest. Some part of me will always respect the person with dirt under their fingernails more than the one in the meeting talking about "optics." But I've started to recognize that voice for what it is — an old reflex, not a truth.

I've spent so long measuring my value in output (lessons planned, pages designed, videos edited) that sitting with a strategy feels uncomfortably close to sitting still. But that's not what it is. Strategy is the work that makes the other work matter. I know that. I've always known that, actually. I just needed to stop producing long enough to hear myself say it.