Why strategists need a history degree.
Strategists are tasked with imagining the future we want to step into — and finding the best pathway to get us there. Sometimes, that’s at a corporate level. Sometimes, it’s at a community level. Sometimes — it’s global.
The uniting factor, though, is that strategists pull from their experiences + knowledge to imagine these futures — and our pathways to them.
Strategists say “benchmark” like the Knights Who Say Ni, say ni —a lot. We begin our processes looking into a litany of competitors and comparators who could show us the way towards a more profitable, or on our better days, impactful outcomes. The education that the best strategists bring into their work involves those benchmarks, literally hundreds of HBR Case Studies, and thousands of pathways to profitability.
Hopefully, the strategist you’ve hired has synthesized and folded so many of these influences into their subconscious that they have an almost intuitive understanding of what will work, and, maybe more importantly — what WON’T work.
The problem? All of these influences come from the profiteering world of business. They are usually quite new (marketing’s cardinal rule: “be hip and up to date” shows its face here). Most importantly, they don’t centre human well-being and progress.
Aristotle…the strategist.
That’s why I think all strategists should have an education in philosophy, history, political science, climate ecology, economics, etc… Anything that will give them an understanding of the history of human ideas, triumphs, and failures.
If strategists are the people in our society most tasked with imagining the future we want to step into — and finding the best pathway there — I want to make sure they have learned from history. I want to make sure that they are keenly aware of debates on what is good and bad in a society. I want them to understand the direct and indirect causes of fascism (so that a little alarm in their head goes off every time they step dangerously close to recreating those causes).
I want them to have taken a relatively comprehensive survey on the history of thoughts/actions that were had/taken in service of human flourishing/destruction.
With that education, strategists can begin to pull from a long list of influences and avoid a longer list of failures. Most importantly, they can do it with an eye towards not just profit — but the creation of a better, more sustainable, more just society.
My basic message: if anybody should be well-versed in our history, it’s the people carving pathways to our future.
