If strategy is sacrifice so you make a virtue of doing without. Then how do you make sure your strategy gives you an advantage? Two ways.

1.You simplify. You concentrate on one group. Or a single benefit. Or one product. Or one use of one product.  You can always tell when a strategy comes unstuck when exceptions start to be made. Which makes things complicated. Which is a drain on your resources.So the first way to strategise is to look for the essence that you can't manage without. And stick to that.

The town I live in just out side of London has a large Italian community. Our consumption of pasta and bolognese sauce has been reported at more than 10 times the national average. So how to increase sales? To persuade the non pasta eaters to try some? Or to get the pasta eaters to eat more? Well actually marketers do follow both strategies. But for the fastest win of course you prioritise those who know and love the product.

2. The second way is to optimise. Which is to build in a feedback loop to find out what makes what you are doing successful and to do more of that. So it is even more successful. This used to be a very minor aspect within marketing communications because the distance from the market meant there was very little opportunity to refine and improve. There is no excuse now we have the internet. One of the main reasons for having good metrics is not to prove we did the right thing but to give us the feedback so we do the better thing.

A favourite example of this second was when the Walmart analysts noticed that beer and nappy sales rose at the same time at the end of the day. They discovered that this was because fathers were asked to collect nappies on the way home and were inclined to reward themselves with beer at the same time. So what did Walmart do? They moved the beer right next to the nappies. And the sales went up again (Putting make-up next to accessories has the same effect for the girls).

And that's it. That's strategy in a nutshell. You can use both approaches in the same project but probably best not to try to do both at once. Simplifying is closer to the start of a project when you are deciding what direction to set off in. And optimisation tends to be used towards the middle or end of the project to make the journey faster or more effective.

As a waggledancer you need to cultivate both your skills in simplifiying a task. And your skill for optimising it. You need to be able to do both.

Have you got any examples of your own for simplifying or optimising which dramatise these that you are willing to share?  Add them to comments