There is a time for homework and a time for jokes.

I was watching a YouTube conversation between Trevor Noah and John Oliver, and part of their back-and-forth focused on how they each ended up working on The Daily Show.

During this moment, Trevor Noah says something along the lines of “All you guys are doing here is homework, right? I just want to do comedy,” describing his first moments experiencing the working environment of the show.

John Oliver jumps in with an insight that stuck with me. He says, yes, mornings on that show are homework time. Because the easy thing to do is to go straight to the jokes and then try to build the rationale around them afterward. But if you do the homework first—if you really understand what’s happening, why it matters, and where the tension lives—the jokes show up naturally later.

That distinction made me think about strategy work. And no, I don’t feel great translating this into a LinkedIn post. But here we are.

What we do as strategists, especially in higher education, is often the same temptation in a different form. We convince ourselves that we already see the insight. We feel it early. We like an idea. And then we start building a base around it.

But, even when you’re working with deep research. Even when you’ve done extensive listening across campus. Even when there’s real goodwill and buy-in. At the beginning, you still don’t actually know.

Insight takes time. And repetition. And patience that feels unproductive while you’re in it. It means reading, and then reading more, and then realizing you didn’t actually understand the thing you thought you understood and going back and reading it again.

The most successful insights I’ve ever landed didn’t come when I was trying to manufacture them. They showed up later, almost accidentally. Often at really inconvenient moments (like 6 a.m. on a Sunday) when I’d wake up and think, shit, that’s it. That’s the brand promise. Or, that’s the organizing idea. Or, that’s the cultural insight. Or, whatever.

I’d write it down, wide awake now, and then fail completely at going back to sleep.

In hindsight, those moments weren’t magic. They were the payoff. The joke arriving after the homework was done.

Strategy isn’t about rushing to the punchline. It’s about doing the work thoroughly enough that the punchline reveals itself.