By Bill Buff, Stratacomm Chief Executive Officer & Senior Partner
Recently, I sat in a meeting with an outside consultant. Their fair but painful recommendations began with, “We don’t want to hurt your feelings, but…”
Ouch. Honest feedback like that is hard to hear, particularly when we’re in the business of providing advice to our own clients. But it was essential to have an outsider – a third party unencumbered by our own biases, legacies and experiences – provide a fresh perspective. They can offer the gut check and hard-to-hear opinion that helps point you toward a better decision.
Stratacomm as an agency brings over three decades of experience to the table, and I’ve been here for 25 years. But sometimes, the better you get at what you do, the bigger your blind spots become. It shows up in phrases like “Well, we tried that once before” or “We’ve always done it this way.” An outside perspective cuts through that bias. It has no history with the decision, no ego in the work and no legacy preconceptions.
That’s why I encourage our team and anyone in this business to incorporate outside consultants and experts into decision-making processes, especially when you have a difficult decision ahead of you and you don’t even know what questions to ask to get started.
Three ways outside experts can help your business
First, outside experts bring specialized knowledge you can’t keep on staff. No organization can employ a specialist for every challenge it encounters, and when you’ve got a legal matter on your hands, or it’s tax-filing season, there’s no substitute for bringing in a subject matter expert.
Second, a third party can provide the reality check you need to overcome established ideas. When we’ve been looking at the same problem for too long, it’s hard to take a step back and see the whole picture. In those cases, we get an incredible amount of value from listening to an expert who can share how they’ve solved similar problems. For our clients, that can show up as organizations that have used the same website or marketing positioning for years; it’s often tough to be objective and spot flaws in your own projects when you’ve been close to the work for a long time.
Finally, a consultant can provide an initial plan for your team to build on and refine. It’s hard to stare at a blank Word document, but it’s often easier to react to and edit a colleague’s initial draft. Starting from an informed outside recommendation gives our agency a foundation to build into something great, accelerating the work we do best. We regularly do the same thing for our clients, creating a framework or outline for them to develop into outstanding work.
A smarter path to the best answers
Work like ours often starts with asking questions and then developing the roadmap to get to the answers. But sometimes, we don’t even know the right questions to ask. Or, we need someone else to share a roadmap that will help us navigate toward an answer. Either way, the best leaders empower their teams to recognize when an expert perspective can produce a better answer than attempting to develop every solution internally.
Outside of the office, I’m a huge baseball fan and coach Little League. I like to remind our players that even the most talented major leaguers need ongoing coaching and training. A coach on the third base line or dugout can often see what a player in the batter’s box can’t. It’s the same in business: The person best positioned to spot what’s holding you back is often someone standing outside the work.
The bottom line is that every leader needs to pick up the phone and ask someone else for advice now and then. Whatever your work or industry, outside help can be a powerful way through challenging times and tough decisions. Day to day, Stratacomm is that outsider offering advice, helping our clients make the most of their communications and marketing budgets to achieve their results. And that conversation I mentioned at the start? It sparked some thinking about how we talk about Stratacomm and where we’re headed next. More to come.
Bill Buff is Stratacomm’s chief executive officer, leading the agency’s strategic vision, operations and growth while continuing to advise clients. With more than 30 years of experience in communications strategy and organizational planning, he has helped guide Stratacomm’s evolution into a trusted partner for organizations navigating complex public, regulatory and reputational challenges.
