1

I just added this to Goodreads if you’d like to add it​ - the book is 50/50 philosophy about the work

we do and how to do the key bits of it. I’m at 70,000 words. There will be about 50 drawings. And

there will be multiple versions - eg BIG, pictures-only, smaller versions.

P.S. If you know any good book editors… :)

---

Hey,

Here is the opening chapter and short thoughts on the topic you are contemplating. No promises
any of it will make sense. These are draft and untouched excerpts from ​Strategy Is Your Words​.
These words will disappear in about 48 hours.

Subscribe to the newsletter​ so you know when it’s out.

One ask​ - if you find something useful here, could you please ​check out the Sweathead podcast​ and
rate it in iTunes​ (5 out of 5 seems legit). It will help people find the podcast, I believe.

If you want practical stuff, take this ​strategy class on Skillshare​.

More articles:
- How to do account planning - a simple approach
- How to explain an idea

You can also find me on ​Twitter​ (playground) and I​ nstagram​ (secret stories).

Enjoy,
Mark
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Strategy Is Your Words

A Strategist’s Fight for Meaning

Mark Pollard

Mighty Jungle Press, New York City

 3

Simple outline

Fighting Words

Section 1: Operating Words

Chapter One: Strategy Is Your Words
Chapter Two: Life Words
Meaning Clarity Truth Fog Mischief Rejection Impostor Lonewolf Tether
Practice Publish Gang
Chapter Three: Work Words
Art Existence Empathy Feeling Drama Information Opinion Sounds
Selling Monogamy Writing Patience
Chapter Four: Operating Words
Chapter Five: This Word Starts Everything

Section 2: Strategy Words

Chapter Six: Framework
Chapter Seven: Problem
Chapter Eight: Insight
Chapter Nine: Advantage
Chapter Ten: Strategy

Section 3: Example Words

Section 4: Practice Words
Section 5: Reading Words
Section 6: Word
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Fighting Words

Italy’s Flero once sprayed into the world a man with the mane and mettle of Inigo Montoya.

A small village below Brescia and a male gaze east from Milan, Flero features on few lists. It is a dot

on a map. It is a place one visits on the way to the place one wants to visit. And it is a murmur on the

Internet. Unlike the rest of the universe, few people have reviewed Flero because Flero is beyond

review. All a review of Flero could say is Flero’s main claim to fame is this: it has little going for it

other than it is near a lot of things with something going for them. Its other claim to fame is this

man it made. This gives Flero two claims to fame and these two claims to fame appear to make the

town feel adequate for history. This is an utmost Italian accomplishment. And Flero's nine-thousand

villagers can now spend eternity enjoying their proximity to fame while guarding the elixir from

which this man burst.

Inigo Montoya hailed from Florin, an imaginary city with the "Fl-" and two syllables of Flero.

He was a swashbuckler whose broken heart only beat to avenge his father’s death. He was a Zorro

without a mask. He was a human rainbow between storms of drunkenness. And his rainbow

beamed only when he felt close to revenge because revenge was his life’s meaning. His rainbow

carried weapons and he was so good at swords he held the rank of Wizard. His violence danced the

tango. His catchphrases were the high notes of a sommelier tasting wine from space grapes. His

single-mindedness ravished the loins of the soul. Inigo Montoya was the broken man inside

everyone and yet he persisted. What Inigo Montoya could do with his hands and a rapier, this man

from Flero could do with his feet and a ball. This Flero man’s name is Andrea Pirlo.
 5

Andrea Pirlo sports a pristine carpet of beard. Its moral rectitude is kempt. All beard hairs

know where to stand at all times. Their maintenance depends on a dedicated team of bonsai

pruners. Wetsand brown hair frames his face. Its wisps lash and dart with every tack, turn, and

twist. His sun-leathered skin is a souvenir from a lifetime in football's riskiest arenas. Football is

Andrea Pirlo's romance. He makes love with a football as Inigo Montoya makes love with a sword

thrust to the heart. To watch highlights of Andrea Pirlo’s passes is to watch comets and stars shoot

through the night sky. If a pass streaks overhead, lovers touch lips to seal their fates. Andrea Pirlo's

romance with football was a whole body romance. But his feet made it happen. His feet could get

balls places and this skill took him places.

From Brescia to Milan and Juventus, from the Olympics to the FIFA World Cup, from Italy’s

Serie A to the UEFA Champions League, Andrea Pirlo’s ability to get the ball where it didn’t know it

needed to go took him where he didn’t know he needed to go. It took him to the United States of

America. On 26 July 2015 and at the age of 36, Andrea Pirlo took his football romance to the stage of

Yankee Stadium in New York. This move would have surprised the young Andrea Pirlo because

New York City Football Club didn’t exist until 2015. And here he was making love with a football in

the most famous baseball stadium in the world one year after placing as the seventh best football

player in Europe.1 And then it happened. The man Flero sprayed into the world and who bore the

nicknames “the architect,” “the professor,” “Maestro,” and “Mozart” spoke for strategy by speaking

about football. And he spoke about football by speaking about football in his new and temporary

home America and his brief fling with Major League Soccer.

“It’s a very hard league to play in. It’s very physical, there’s a lot of running. So there is a lot

of physical work and to me, in my mind, too little play,” Pirlo said .

1
​2015 UEFA Best Player in Europe
 6

Yes, Andrea Pirlo had turned 37 the week he said this but this wasn’t an old athlete’s

chagrin. Listen again: “...a lot of running… too little play.” This is wisdom from the mystical bowels

of Flero. And, if one draws one’s ear close to the words - closer - one can hear the frustrations of a

strategist.

A lot of running; too little play.

Andrea Pirlo knew how to get a football where it didn’t know it needed to go. Unfortunately,

this meant some of his teammates also didn’t know where they needed to go to receive the footballs

that didn’t know where they were going. Andrea Pirlo’s game was to make the football do the work;

the American game was to make the player do the work. American players grow up in a culture that

prizes running, that knows who can run and who can’t run, and that watches to see who runs. If a

player doesn’t run the player doesn’t last.

A survival reflex born from the dregs of the Puritan work ethic where work took one closer

to God and a vast, bountiful country from which many thought they could take what they found if

they ran there first, running has its uses. Running helps people arrive on time, win medals, sight-see

at speed, escape disasters, release endorphins, and hunt for food. "Chase myopathy" is one theory

that explains why humans run and how running made humans look the way humans look. Chase

myopathy happens when a predator pursues prey until the prey collapses exhausted. Humans used

to do that to animals. Humans would run and run and run until the animals collapsed. The

differences between a football and an animal abound. Footballs do not have any of the following:

legs, brains, eyes, ears, voices, wings, arms, instincts, adrenaline, and meat. Footballs are inanimate

objects. Humans do not need to chase footballs until they collapse. Humans don’t eat footballs. But

this is how some people play football and how many people play business. Running is the most

important activity. Having others see one run is the second most important.

A lot of running; too little play.

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When people think they have never attended so many meetings, received so many emails,

and watched so many movements on organizational charts while having so little work to show, this

is running. When the weekly check-ins, annual reviews, and urban sprawl of job titles do not lead to

better work, this is running. When the marketing briefs are vague and lead to vague workshops

with too many people who are vague about why they are in the room but have to act like they are

the most significant people in the room, this is running. When timesheets are the only measure of

contribution, profit and loss statements are empires, and salary freezes last a decade, this is

running. When people discuss meeting agendas, meeting minutes, and email chains more than good

work, this is running. When strategy is one hundred slides long, ideas need tens of reviews by

people who do not put pen to paper, and company decisions demand every human in the village,

this is running. When management offsites lead to initiatives that lead nowhere, when management

announces another agency repositioning in gobbledygook, and when management spends more

time with itself than with its people, this is running.

What game are you playing?

To play a game, you need to know the goal and the rules, and you need a place to play,

players, and an object with which to play.

Inigo Montoya knew the game he was playing because he was the only person playing it. His

goal was to avenge his father’s death. His rules were the rules of a swordsman’s honor. He was one

player and the man who killed his father and scarred his face Count Rugen was the other player. A

sword fight the place, a sword his object. Andrea Pirlo knew what game he was playing. His goal

was to win football games. His rules were the rules of an international football association. A

football field the place, a football his object.

As much as their manes marked them similar, one difference distinguished Inigo Montoya

and Andrea Pirlo. This difference was strategy. Inigo Montoya knew what game he wanted to play
 8

but Inigo Montoya did not have a strategy. Unable to play his game because he was unable to find

Count Rugen, Inigo Montoya drank himself into stupors. His stupors were his soul laughing at his

lack of strategy. His stupors were his soul yelling at his brain to find new meaning. And his tale tells

the perils of a life that commits to a single event of meaning before it ends. The soul knows irony

when it sees it.

Andrea Pirlo’s strategy was to make the football surprise opponents. His tactics were to play

in deep positions near the back line, to keep the ball moving pass after pass, to spray the football in

stunning ways to his teammates, to drill footballs at the goal from further out than expected, and to

wear his Italian locks and bonsai beard throughout. These tactics broke conventions because the

conventions were athleticism. To run, dribble, blast and muscle. The conventions weren’t to not

run, or to get the ball where it didn’t know it needed to go and to do so by making the ball move in

rare ways. Andrea Pirlo had a strategy and the strategy dismantled opponents because his strategy

understood the conventions within which his opponents operated. The conventions were his

inputs, his research. When he moved to America, the conventions of and the inputs into his strategy

changed.

A lot of running; too little play.

“What I’m talking about is actually a system or culture. I don’t mean that the level of

technical skills are low. I just mean there is a cultural void that needs to be filled,” Andrea Pirlo said.

When Andrea Pirlo diagnoses football in America he diagnoses strategy. He describes

agencies, clients, and colleagues running around a football field. He describes a strategist hoping to

Andrea Pirlo a strategy to them but nobody knows how to receive it and people are too busy

running to receive it. And this assumes the strategist is capable.

A culture is a set of behaviors born from a set of beliefs. Running for no reason comes from

the belief that conspicuous activity is how a career progresses. Conspicuous activity is unnecessary
 9

activity that others can see. The competing belief is that companies that hire creative minds hire

them to unleash creative acts to help their companies or their clients’ companies. These two beliefs

are very different starting points and lead to polar opposite behaviors. The creative company builds

itself around behaviors that serve the creative mind - all of the creative mind. Its abilities and

disabilities, its need for quiet and stimulation, its need for validation and its struggle to accept it, its

need to create for the sake of creating and for this sake to happen daily, to create space for creative

minds to find meaning. And since words are the unit of meaning, creative companies demand more

from words. Creative minds use words to expose truth, not hide from it. Creative minds push their

words, they don’t constipate their words. Fierce brains abound in strategy but their public words

enter some corporate business park dystopia. That is Andrea Pirlo’s cultural void.

With revenge and football and glorious hair, Inigo Montoya and Andrea Pirlo achieved

meaning. This is more than most humans achieve. Meaning can fleet, focus can drift. But running

because everyone is running and everyone is running off cliffs and bridges, with scissors and

bayonets, with maps stuck to their faces, well, what is this? It’s not play. Play is majestic. Play knows

the heart of the game. Play knows itself. Play is unafraid to create new rules, to challenge new

opponents, or to adapt itself because of new opponents. Play is a strategist returning to his or her

principal object. This object is words.

Andrea Pirlo has retired from football and is now exploring the meaning of the second half

of his life. This is a spiritual exercise for all humans where one must reckon with oneself before one

reckons with death. Inigo Montoya inflicted death upon Count Rugen. He lived his life’s meaning in

the murder of Count Rugen and would then have to consider if he could find new meaning.

Here is the murder:

Inigo Montoya flies into the castle’s banquet room and into a dagger Count Rugen had flung

at his stomach. “I’m sorry, father. I tried,” Inigo Montoya says to the empty room.
 10

“Have you been tracing me your whole life only to fail now?” Count Rugen says. “I think

that’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard. How marvellous.”

Inigo Montoya slinks against the wall and bumps to the ground.

Count Rugen says, “Good Heavens. Are you still trying to win?” And thrusts his rapier at

Inigo Montoya. Inigo Montoya cannot move but finds the elbow strength to parry the thrusts. Once.

Twice. Twice more. He then pushes off the wall, stumbles in his blood drenched vest and shirt, and

stabs at the retreating Count Rugen.

"Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

He lashes.

"Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

He jabs.

"Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

He advances.

"Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."

He overpowers.

He tells Count Rugen to offer him everything he asks for. The six fingered man says,

“Anything you want,” and he attacks. Inigo Montoya catches his arm and says, "I want my father

back, you son of a bitch."

“Hello. My name is Mark Pollard. You killed my profession. Prepare to hear about it.”

I want my craft back, you son of a bitch. Fight One - Words.

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Chapter Two: Life Words

A strategy life is hell bent on its rummage for ​meaning​. It craves ​clarity​ and will not relent

until it stares ​truth​ in the face. Truth is dangerous when it stares back and there is always more

truth to find. And so the strategy life is restless. It is a quiet frenzy lurching between knowing,

wanting to know, not knowing what it needs to know, and worrying it will never know enough.

Meaning mania gives way to drift as listless phases tempt the strategy life from its quest. A high falls

to the Earth. The strategist lays foetal next to it. A ​fog​ envelops both. They await the dawn of the

next frenzy.

Truth makes the strategy life a life of ​mischief​. Societies prefer compliance to mischief so

the strategy life runs into ​rejection​ like a seagull flying into a glass window to eat the fish and chips.

Every day. Into glass. Over years this appetite for mischief can turn on the strategist. The strategist

can start to feel like an ​impostor​. What am I even doing here? And because many strategists are

lonewolves​ foraging for truth in the forests of capitalism, years of meetings and workshops and

business speak can loosen their grips on their internal worlds. Sometimes the strategy life doesn’t

like the truth it sees or it loses sight of its own truth. Or it marries someone else’s truth.

One day the wilderness pushes the strategy life home. There it rummages in itself. It realizes

its manic quest for truth out there was one way to hide from the truth in here. Foetal no more, the

strategy life clears the mess, reveals the bedrock, and tethers itself to the bedrock so the wilderness

doesn’t usurp it with its own meaning. The ​tethers​ are ​practice​, ​publishing​, and ​gangs​. And now the

strategy life’s hell bent rummage for meaning becomes life bent and strategy work is life’s work.
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Your word​: Clarity

Peekaboo. Clarity matters more than truth. Peekaboo. Many lies are clear. Peekaboo. Some

lies are useful. Peekaboo. Without clarity is confusion. Peekaboo. A strategist who confuses others is

a regular strategist. Peekaboo. Public confusion can lead to public clarity. Peekaboo. Public clarity

can lead to private clarity. Peekaboo. Too much confusion will cost a strategist’s career. Peekaboo.

Too much confusion will steal a strategist’s sense of self. Peekaboo. Clarity. Peekaboo. Clear?

Peekaboo.

A penguin, a sloth, and a social media influencer walk into a bar. Old leather seats with cuts

and creeks and rusty steel legs sit knee high under a maelstrom of loud bodies. The social media

influencer places the penguin on a stool and slings the sloth around her neck. It’s Happy Hour in

The Temple Bar, Dublin. The Temple Bar isn’t a bar. It’s a scrum of bars. It wraps its big arms

around people’s necks and heaves toward an invisible tryline. A tryline is an endline. It’s where a

rugby player kisses a ball to the grass to score points. A rugby player can do this between the tryline

and the dead ball line. There are two types of rugby and the two types of rugby player score tries

the same way even though they play two different types of rugby. There are seventeen types of

penguin. Maybe twenty. This type of penguin is fond of a Guinness or two or three. It’s crass to

count in Ireland. This is why the Dubliners refuse mathematics in school and Irish sloths fear

numbers the way influencers fear a failed social media post. And so the penguin drinks her

Guinness and one thing is clear. This penguin is thirsty.

Clarity is an arm wrestle with mess. A strategist decides when clarity has happened and

knows it has happened when other people are clear about the clarity. Clarity is an arm wrestle with

mess where free arms can punch the opponent in the mouth. A strategist’s decision that clarity has
 13

happened is a starting point. It’s a preemptive heckle. “Here’s what I think about you.” Clarity is an

arm wrestle where free arms can punch the opponent in the mouth but both clarity and mess get

what they want. Clarity gets clarity and the mess grows. More mess, more clarity. Clarity is an arm

wrestle where free arms can punch the opponent in the mouth but both clarity and mess get what

they want and they know who will win every time. Clarity always wins because clarity decides the

winner. It’s a rigged game. Clarity can declare itself. “I am clear.” They need each other like a

strategist needs a brief.

Clarity is a social game. A strategist and any brain allies will declare clarity. “I’ve cracked it.”

Then beneficiaries of this clarity play the game or they watch it. “Thank you, thank you, strategist.

What would we ever do without you?” If a beneficiary of clarity plays, a goodwill melee can erupt

and together the minds can further sharpen the clarity. “Have you thought about this?” “No, but this

is so useful and now we have new clarity.” Some melees are bloodsport. Combatants defy each

other’s clarity as they fight for their egos and budgets. They adjudicate each other’s clarity and wait

for someone somewhere to adjudicate whose adjudication wins. Thumbs up or thumbs down? And

then there are the spectators. Spectators roleplay with clarity. Spectators pretend they are clear to

not look stupid or to not hurt feelings. Spectators pretend they are clear because they are still

overcoming their surprise at being in the room or their life is a life of orders and they don’t want to

think about what happens before the orders. These bystanders seem benign but their roleplay can

cost time and air. Evil spectators exist in most companies. Evil spectators offer no clarity. They add

mess with bravados of self-importance, noise, and words. Or they stay silent and wait to ply their

trade later and undermine everything they have heard. Clarity is a game that happens when a

strategist and a strategist’s fellow game players believe it has happened.

When clarity happens, action happens. That is the point of clarity. With clarity, the team can

act. But clarity isn’t pure. People can hear the same words and have those words mean something
 14

different. And clarity doesn’t stop. Clarity needs to continue to happen so actions can adjust. A

strategist doesn’t get to lock it in like they are about to win Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. The

strategist moves from one arm wrestle with mess to the next and hopes there aren’t too many

punches in the mouth. Emotional mouthguards help.

Clarity is the strategist’s drug. Clarity is how meaning feels. It’s a runner’s high with a

runner’s exhaustion but without the runner’s legwork. When strategists say they want clarity, they

sign up for all the mess it accompanies. Mess is the strategist’s enabler. With each moment of

clarity, mess sprawls and inkruns to new corners of the paper and finger beckons the strategist to

rummage it. This is why a strategist needs more than one moment of clarity. A strategist needs

clarities.