Bloggocks

I get asked what I do quite a lot, and I find it hard to explain, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it’s not a job that people outside of my industry will even recognise, and secondly, I’m not entirely sure myself :)

My current job title is ‘Head of Strategy’. I head up the strategy division within Reading Room Manchester. Any clearer? Maybe – you now know that I run a team, but you likely have no idea what my team does.

Strategy – it’s something that’s quite new to the online world, at least as an everyday word – obviously, the concept has always existed. Basically, it’s about bringing together requirements and concepts in a way that creates a tangible output. Still fairly confusing, no?

Let’s give a practical example. You run a business. It sells flowers and cheese. Currently, you have a small shop on the high street and a basic website that details your main products and your address.

Naturally, you want to be able to sell your products online – it worked for Amazon, why can’t you make millions too? After all, your cheese is awesome, everyone in the world would want it. So you approach an agency asking for a website that will allow you to sell cheese online.

In the old days (5 years ago maybe), most agencies would get to work creating a design or two, put out something you liked the look of and plaster it on an ecommerce system. There might even be online payments. Everyone is happy – you paid £10,000 for your online shop, and it has everything – you can update thousands of products, take payment through paypal, worldpay and nochex, people can sign your guestbook and you have a news section. Happy days, no?

Maybe. Maybe not. Taking a strategic look on it, we’d be looking at your requirements from the very beginning – do you actually need to sell products online? Do you need full-blown ecommerce that you can update yourself? Do you have the staff to keep the website up to date and handle the orders if they come in? Do you need to include your twitter account, or are you just requesting it because everyone else does it?

We’ll talk to your users – both internal and external – to see what they want. We’ll test designs and functionality on them, and we’ll look for technical and creative solutions that suit your needs and those of your customers. We will sometimes argue with you if we think you’re wrong.

The point is, the plan we put together to deliver your website will be considered and well planned to ensure that the website you end up with is the best it can be for you, for your users, and for your budget. We’ll happily tell you that you can’t achieve what you’d like to on the money you have, but at the same time we’ll work with you to identify things you *can* do for that money, and we’ll focus on always giving you a tangible result.

That’s being strategic.

So…me. I run the team at Reading Room Manchester that will work with you to do that. I have people on my team who specialise in different areas – social planners, usability consultants, marketing experts…as well as interface, creative and technical development experts. As head of the team, it’s my job to know a lot of about each of these areas; to be able to guide and advise clients when they have questions or problems, and to know when I need to bring my experts in to fill in the detail. I’m also expected to be able to think on my feet and bring to bear my 10 years of high pressure project delivery experience to dozens of projects, providing a point of escalation where required and a source of advice when needed.

I’m the first to admit that I don’t know everything, and I think it’s something that makes me unique amongst some of my contemporaries – I don’t try to bullshit my way through something, choosing instead to fetch the people who do know rather than trying to cover up my inadequacies. Saying that, I do know a lot, and I like to think that I’m generally respected for my skillset and approach to all things digital. I think the fact that I’ve never once applied for any of the promotions I’ve been given speaks for itself. I also have some simply spiffing relationships with my clients who tend to appreciate my honesty and knowledgable approach to their projects.

Does that really answer ‘what I can do’? I’m not really sure, and this all comes back to how I find it hard to explain to people what it is I actually do – I work in so many disciplines that it’s hard to cover it off in the soundbite that their polite interest allows. Usually, I just tell them I’m a project manager :)