He was like an artist, a filmmaker or a painter. You could guess which way the work of art was heading but you didn’t know quite how he was going to get there – Bob Lelangue on Eddy Merckx
Merckx legacy is not one of innovation. He did not create anything new in terms of the technical side of cycling…but you don’t have to be a great innovator to be a genius – William Fotheringham
These two quotes on the cyclist Eddy Merckx from the biography Half Man, Half Bike struck a chord. When he was at the top of his profession in the early 1970′s people assumed his annihilation of his competitors was a sign of disrespect and arrogance. Merckx’s domination in cycling stemmed from his pathological fear of failure.
In some ways I see it as being similar to the concept of flow – of things coming together at the right time. Every so often we have those fleeting moments where we push ourselves outside of our limits and meet our own personal moment of ‘Souplesse‘. It is an example of craftsmanship that comes from experience that lifts the work to a new level.
We are all faced with the fear of the unknown – that moment where you go down a serendipitous path not knowing exactly what is at the end of it. We have an idea, a hunch or intuition but the path getting there is obscured.
‘Souplesse‘ implies pushing the limits of what you know further than before – or to put it another way going outside your comfort zone.
I hope to apply a little ‘Souplesse‘ in all areas of my professional and personal life in 2013.
In 2011 I posted a talk of Jon Steel of WPP, talking about what he values most in advertising account planning.
I had such a fantastic response to the post, that I decided to see if I could find any more of Jon Steel and his talks out there. I came across this talk in which Jon spoke at a WPP event to celebrate Planning at 40.
Where possible I’ve tried to summarise the relevant points made by Jon Steel, but I would urge people to watch the talk and make up their own minds.
Planning /Planners cannot be truly effective when working in isolation. Rather the best work comes from integrating and working with other disciplines.
The true test of planning is not in new business but in existing business. Are the right strategic decisions being made by the client?
In the absence of talented creatives, planning will never make up for solid creative ideas based on sound thinking
Discipline, research and hard work are still the cornerstone of planning as a practice
Planning is not about creativity. It is about grounded creativity
The best work comes from the tension between creatives and planning practices to challenge the work of the other
Doing the right thing has given way to doing something because in general clients tenure in charge have been shorten to a couple of years. As a result it’s very hard to embed a long-term strategy for clients.
Planning works best when it’s setting a client’s goals, whether it is communications, branding, or tackling an underlying business problem.
Is is right to disrupt the planning process on the turn of a card?
It would not be controversial to say that planners like order. By order I mean a framework or process that guides their thinking. If you look at the role of a planner, it is trying to bring order by finding some sort of truth or insight to a problem.
Just as a framework can free a planner to tackle a problem, there maybe instances where it can trap a planner into a certain pattern of thinking. Whatever model a planner does apply, the planner should shape it and not let it shape their thinking.
This is easier said then done. I’ve been exploring the idea of introducing disruption into the planning process. My preferred approach is Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies. Imagine a deck of a 101 unique cards each with an aphorism or suggestion that can be applied. These suggestions could be quite prescriptive such as:
or conceptual:
Eno applied the techniques with David Bowie’s Berlin trilogy albums (Low, Heroes, Lodger) on a number of different recordings. This lateral form of thinking was explained by Eno.
The Oblique Strategies evolved from me being in a number of working situations when the panic of the situation – particularly in studios – tended to make me quickly forget that there were others ways of working and that there were tangential ways of attacking problems that were in many senses more interesting than the direct head-on approach. If you’re in a panic, you tend to take the head-on approach because it seems to be the one that’s going to yield the best results Of course, that often isn’t the case – it’s just the most obvious and – apparently – reliable method. The function of the Oblique Strategies was, initially, to serve as a series of prompts which said, “Don’t forget that you could adopt *this* attitude,” or “Don’t forget you could adopt *that* attitude.¹
Does the lateral form of thinking sit at odds with critical thinking at the heart of planning? In graft and craft: What makes a planner, Martin Weigel talks of the role of a planner being defined by technique and craft over time.
He talks passionately of planning as a discipline, and I see no reason why Oblique Strategies cannot supplement the core craft of planning.
planning must be stimulating, imaginative, intuitive and opinionated
Adding an element of disruption to planning is not going to be right for every scenario and my recommendation is that it should be used sparingly. I tend to use Oblique Strategies when I’m stuck in rut or a pattern of thinking. That is when it effectively guides my train of thinking into unfamiliar and uncomfortable areas.
Originally Oblique Strategies came beautifully boxed up however not very practical if you’re out and about.
I see a lot of ways in which you can experiment with the structure and form of OS. I like the idea of having a cut down version or a set of personalised suggestions that a planner can use to disrupt the planning process.
With this in mind I’ve ordered Artefact Cards from John Willshire. I like the physicality of having a deck of cards to hand and the fact that you can easily add or takeaway suggestions.
It’s not disruption for the sake of it more a case of changing a thought’s trajectory. Jurgen Habermas said it best:
Since our complex societies are highly susceptible to interferences and accidents, they certainly offer ideal opportunities for a prompt disruption of normal activities.
