Don’t Underestimate the “Second Bullet” of Your Strategy

Have you ever been in a strategy session and by the end of it, the white board is full of great and not-so-great ideas? And then there’s this one magical idea that lights up the eyes of everyone in the room. So, then you spend the rest of the session discussing how this wonderful new idea or solution will change everything.

Pretty shortly, assignments are made and everyone goes back to their work spaces to, collectively, enable this new strategy to take hold and make change.

In my experience, this describes 90-plus percent of the strategy sessions in which I’ve been involved. And it’s not bad.

But here’s something else that has happened in those sessions. Before we hit on the “big idea,” there was often a more practical solution, and while not sexy, it met the commonsense standard of everyone in the room.

It’s the second bullet on the board that will be accepted and acted upon, but it is not generally regarded as the focal point of the strategy. It’s the thing you’ve done before and you know you can do again. It’s the problem you already understand, and you know what to do about it in this new context. It’s the right strategy for this situation, and you know it will work to the extent it needs to. But it’s so well accepted, it doesn’t meet the standard of the “big idea” everyone came into this session to find.

For example, let’s say you have a problem connecting with the male demographic between the ages of 25 and 45. So, in the course of your brainstorming session, you looked at sports, the outdoors, fashion, video games, entertainment, and ultimately, you decided that the big idea will be to use the sports of American football and hockey to connect with your targeted demographic.

But in the course of that same brainstorming session, you came up with some key supplemental ideas to ensure you’re not missing anything. The second bullet on the white board is a series of somewhat tactical and somewhat strategic how-to videos for YouTube, and shorts and reels for Tik Tok and Instagram. You’ve done them before, and they’ve performed respectably, so the culture of your organization is taking them for granted for that they are and what they can do.

After you launch the new campaign, that big idea involving football and hockey is struggling, but for some reason, this new series of how-to videos is taking off. It’s on message, it’s relevant, it’s timely, and it’s getting clicks and shares.

So often, we devote so much of our time and resources on unproven ideas, and we take for granted the ones that have already brought us much of the success we’ve achieved.

The next time you participate in a strategy session, don’t underestimate the power of that second bullet.