On almost every LinkedIn profile today, you’ll see a skill for some sort of ‘strategy’ capability listed. Strategy has become the modern day buzzword for ‘senior professional’. Anyone who considers themselves in a senior role will generally map out their skill set around having strategic leadership.

When you move from the digital to the real world and ask someone, though, often those same people can’t provide a clear and concise understanding of what good strategy is and why it is important. And then there’s the wave of strategists across all sectors — PR, corporate, digital, communications, social. The list goes on and on and on.

As a professional strategist this is somewhat frustrating for a two reasons:

• Everyone thinks they can do my job.
• But no one actually knows what my job is.

It’s particularly frustrating because when hiring, people often don’t know what to look for in a strategist (other than ‘smart’).