Series 2 Episode 05: Zoe Scaman

On this episode of Strategy Sheroes I’m joined by Zoe Scaman.

Zoe is the founder of Bodacious, a London based strategy studio. Zoe has brought her strategic brain to leading agencies such as Universal McCann, and Droga5, consulted for Adidas and was the Global Head of Strategy for the Ridley Scott Creative Group. She has a wealth of experience across industries and if you follow Zoe on social media you’ll see she regularly advocates for other women in strategy.

Zoe and I chat about:

• Zoe’s unique journey into strategy

• The lost art of asking questions

• Zoe’s perspective on what strategy is and could be

• Putting yourself out there

Check out below some of my favourite quotes from our discussion and listen to our full conversation on apple podcasts or spotify.

On what Zoe calls her career portfolio rather than trajectory

It’s important for people to see different types of strategy and different career paths being discussed...I’ve not had a traditional career…I call it a portfolio rather than a trajectory.

I just got bored very quickly and I want people to understand there is another option, and there are different ways of exploring strategy as a career path and I also think it’s a different way of exploring strategy as a concept and context as well.

So when I’m putting myself out there it’s not just to make sure there’s a female role model; but it is also to show people there is another opportunity when it comes to your career path and there is a different way of thinking about what strategy can and should be.

On promoting strategy as a career option within education

We need to help young people see there’s a possibility of a career when it comes to writing and problem solving and being creative. It’s just not one of those careers we tell people about. We’re so focused on traditional vocational careers when it comes to children.

We need to show strategy to the people who are very curious and who might be labelled as difficult as they’re always asking questions, and those who are fascinated by words and meaning. The students who start studying psychology at AS level because their brains are really interested in it. We need to find those people earlier and start to funnel them into an industry which is desperately in need of new talent.

On the importance of problem definition

The most important thing we have is definition of the problem and that’s where you need to be spending 90% of your energy, because once you define that problem perfectly then all of the solutions and strategic way forward seem so obvious.

But we spend so much more time trying to come up with solutions that can then be blown over like a house of cards because they’re not built on strong foundations. That’s where I would love to see more emphasis from agencies but also from clients to say, we need to spend more time asking ourselves exactly what are we trying to achieve and then we can go from there.

Links to some of the stuff we talked about:

Zoe’s strategy studio Bodacious

Zoe’s articles on Finding the Beauty in Boredom and The Lost Art of Asking Questions

Matthew Walker’s book Why we Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams

You can follow Zoe on twitter @zoescaman