A Revolutionary

Strategy is a thinking business and is essential to setting a course, but real change requires doing.

In a recent New Yorker article, James Wood profiles George Orwell, one of the most stirring political writers of the last century. Clearly an expert on the man and his work, Mr. Wood makes an important distinction that seems instructive beyond the world of letters.

Where the Heart Is download The distinction is between being revolutionary and being a revolutionary.

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As a school boy, he’d been moved by the force and rage of Orwell’s 1941 pamphlet, “The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius.” The pamphlet calls for a socialist revolution in Britain as a means of defeating the Nazis. On first reading the prose is incendiary–as a good manifesto should be. But Wood points out that his experience with the work later in life has been very different. Looking back, through a new lens colored by the passage of time and his own maturity, it’s not quite incendiary enough…or at least not instructional enough.

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Worlds Greatest Dad ipod Woods writes:

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“Nowadays, Orwell’s imprecision about exactly how this revolution might come about seems telling, because despite the fighting words, his vagueness seems a kind of wish fulfillment, as if a nice muddled revolution might spontaneously emerge from the gentle London fog…But there is a difference between being revolutionary and being a revolutionary, and journalists are not required to be tacticians.”

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The Chumscrubber download It’s a brilliant distinction for marketers to think about: being revolutionary is overdone, being a revolutionary is rare.

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As the days pass and institutions fall, we sit in rooms and strategize. These meetings can be productive. Some of them are long overdue. Doing without thinking is, after all, what got us into this mess in the first place. The level of attentiveness in these meetings has never been higher, the candor shocking (and refreshing). And yet, there’s something scarier even than the brutal truths we’re finally acknowledging: what will happen when we leave the room and go back to our desks? Once the thinking is done, what happens next? And who will manifest our plans?

Tacticians! That’s what we need. Take a good look around and gather your doers.